The story so far: In December 2023, as air travel peaked in the holiday season, it was found that security personnel and private staff were collecting facial biometrics at airport entry gates without the consent or knowledge of passengers for the Digi Yatra app.
What are the complaints from air travellers?
Last month, there was a surge in complaints from passengers using various airports about the “coercive and deceptive” manner in which both private staff and CISF personnel were enrolling them for Digi Yatra. Travellers said CISF personnel at the entry gate of passenger buildings were asking travellers to scan their boarding pass and capturing their photos, following which they would provide consent on behalf of the passengers for registering for Digi Yatra without seeking permission or even informing them.
The CEO of Digi Yatra Foundation, Suresh Khadakbhavi, told The Hindu that enrolment for Digi Yatra was stepped up in December as airports record high footfall. He said this was part of the “day of travel” enrolment drive at airports, which is for those who haven’t downloaded the app and registered themselves ahead of travel. “This is to allow passengers to experience the Digi Yatra process and understand and appreciate the benefits of the seamless, hassle-free passenger travel so that they can do permanent enrolment on the Digi Yatra app,” said Mr. Khadakbhavi.
What is Digi Yatra? What are its objectives?
The Digi Yatra initiative aims to promote digital processing of passengers for paper-less and seamless movement through various checkpoints at airports such as the entry gate, security check area and boarding gate. The Digi Yatra policy was unveiled by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in 2018 as an entirely voluntary programme. After some delay, it was rolled out from December 2022 at three airports, including Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. Today, it is present at 13 airports, and will be expanded to 24 more airports in 2024.
The Digi Yatra app is not owned by the government, but by a consortium called the Digi Yatra Foundation whose shareholders comprise the Airports Authority of India and five private airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kochi. The government does not provide any funding for its implementation, and airports are required to spend from their kitty. The implementation involves an app that passengers can download. They need to provide their name, mobile, email address and Aadhaar document to register. They also have to upload a selfie so that their image can be matched with the one on the Aadhaar. These two steps lead to the creation of a digi yatra travel id. When passengers upload their air tickets, the digi yatra id gets updated with their travel details.
At airports, passengers scan their boarding pass at an e-gate and look into a camera that captures their image. Once the face verification is successful, the e-gate opens. This also creates the passenger data-set which is a combination of their facial scan and PNR. This data is then used as a single token at the remaining check points so that a passenger can simply zip through them with a mere facial scan without the need to produce a boarding pass. The aim is to improve operational efficiency and allow faster processing of passengers, allowing airlines to track delayed passengers and enhancing security by ensuring there is no exchange of passes among passengers or wrong boarding.
What are the issues about implementation?
The government maintains that there is no central storage of a passenger’s data, which is encrypted and stored in a secure wallet on his or her mobile device. Though the data is shared with the departure airport on the day of travel, it is purged within 24 hours. According to a detailed analysis by the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Digi Yatra policy states that the airports using the Digi Yatra Biometric Boarding System will adhere to the data protection law as mandated by the Government of India. But the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 was passed by Parliament in August 2023 and the rules are yet to be framed. The Bill has also been criticised for giving the government broad powers to exempt any of its agencies from all its provisions. Additionally, these exemptions are also granted in the Digi Yatra policy. According to the policy document, “any security agency, Bureau of Immigration or other government agency may be given access to the passenger data based on the current/existing protocols prevalent at that time.” It also provides that the Biometric Boarding System will “have an ability to change the data purge settings based on security requirements on a need basis.”
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