Private companies and public authorities are quietly using facial recognition systems around Australia. Despite the growing use of this controversial technology, there is little in the way of specific regulations and guidelines to govern its use. Read More

Despite the necessary legislation not having been passed, the federal government is “streamrolling” ahead with its plan to launch a national facial recognition database and is already on the hunt for a private provider to build out the new services. The Department of Home Affairs last week approached the market for a provider to deliver identity matching services, including to host the new National Driver Licence Facial Recognition Solution (NDLFRS). This database, incorporating drivers licence photos from state and territory governments, has been launched but is not yet in operation because the necessary legislation has still not passed through Parliament. The move to issue a tender for this week, before the legislation has been passed, has been criticised by privacy advocates as putting the cart before the horse, with calls for a moratorium on facial recognition technology until better privacy precautions are in place. Read More

The Australian Information Commissioner has issued a very significant determination resulting from a Commissioner initiated investigation into 7-Eleven, where she found that the company had breached Australian Privacy Principle (APP) 3 and 5 of the Privacy Act 1988. Read More

In the US, tireless opposition to state use of facial recognition algorithms has recently won some victories. Outside the US, however, the tide is heading in the other direction.

Here in Australia, despite pushback from the Human Rights Commission, the trend is towards greater use. The government proposed an ambitious plan for a national face database (including wacky trial balloons about age-verification on porn sites). Some local councils are adding facial recognition into their existing surveillance systems. Police officers have tried out the dystopian services of Clearview AI. Should Australia be using this technology? To decide, we need to answer fundamental questions about the kind of people, and the kind of society, we want to be. Read More

Jake Goldenfein, Swinburne University of Technology Australian police agencies are reportedly using a private, unaccountable facial recognition service that combines machine learning and wide-ranging data-gathering practices to identify members of the public from online photographs. The service, Clearview AI, is like a reverse image search for faces. You upload an image of someone’s face and… Read More

Jake Goldenfein, Swinburne University of Technology A Bill to set up the federal government’s biometric identity system is currently going through Parliament. But there are concerns over just how much information the system would be allowed to gather, and how that might be used to establish more than just the identity of a person. Strongly… Read More

A commitment to share the biometric data of most Australians – including your driving licence photo – agreed at Thursday’s Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting will result in a further erosion of our privacy.
That sharing is not necessary. It will be costly. But will it save us from terrorism? Not all, although it will give people a false sense of comfort. Read More

Margarita Vladimirova, PhD in Privacy Law and Facial Recognition Technology, Deakin University The morning started with a message from a friend: “I used your photos to train my local version of Midjourney. I hope you don’t mind”, followed up with generated pictures of me wearing a flirty steampunk costume. I did in fact mind. I… Read More

Ausma Bernot, PhD Candidate, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University A group of researchers studied 15 months of human mobility movement data taken from 1.5 million people and concluded that just four points in space and time were sufficient to identify 95% of them, even when the data weren’t of excellent quality. That… Read More

You walk into a shopping centre to buy some groceries. Without your knowledge, an electronic scan of your face is taken by in-store surveillance cameras and stored in an online database. Each time you return to that store, your “faceprint” is compared with those of people wanted for shoplifting or violence. This might sound like science fiction but it’s the reality for many of us. By failing to take our digital privacy seriously – as former human rights commissioner Ed Santow has warned – Australia is “sleepwalking” its way into mass surveillance. Read More