Why in news?
Home Affairs Ministry is planning to link fingerprint, face recognition data to the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS).
What is CCTNS?
- Aim - CCTNS aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for effective policing through e-Governance.
- It is envisaged as a countrywide integrated database on crime incidents and criminals.
- It aims to connect all police stations, with their crime and criminal data, with a central database.
- It was conceived as a response to the Mumbai attacks of 2008 and approved in 2009.
- Implementation - The system is already in operation in many states but with a limited coverage.
- The first phase of CCTNS is nearing completion.
- 14,500 of 15,500 police stations across the country have been connected.
- Only Bihar, for various administrative reasons, is lagging behind.
What is the current proposal?
- As part of Phase II of CCTNS, MHA is planning to scale up fingerprint collection from all police stations and link it to CCTNS.
- It also plans to connect the Railway Protection Force’s stations and their data, apart from the revenue police stations of Uttarakhand.
- The proposal has provisions for integrating face recognition system and iris scans as well with the CCTNS.
- Integration of these data will boost police department’s crime investigation capabilities.
- It will also help civilian verification when needed.
- Also, lakhs of motor vehicle offences, registered by the transport department, has no central database.
- Now, this too would be connected to the CCTNS.
- This would help in ascertaining the history of criminal offences that a vehicle is involved in.
What is the need?
- The Central Finger Print Bureau (CFPB) now stores the fingerprint database.
- It currently uses Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), also called FACTS, for matching fingerprints.
- However, this technology is an outdated one when compared to Federal Bureau of Investigation's technology (FBI of the US).
- Also, while FBI has over 4 crore fingerprints in its database, the CFPB currently has a database of just over 10 lakh fingerprints.
- Hence, scaling up data collection is an essential prerequisite for better criminal investigations.
Source: Indian Express
Quick Fact
Revenue police stations of Uttarakhand
- Uttarakhand is known for a unique police system.
- Although regular police is established, in some hill areas, jurisdiction of the police is yet to be extended.
- So the civil officials of the Revenue Department have powers and functions of Police.
- They perform functions of police like arrest of offenders and investigation.