2015-12-17
The Turnbull Government appears intent on developing a national facial recognition ‘Capability' after a preliminary Privacy Impact Assessment glossed over the essential risks of the proposal, the Australian Greens said today.
"A string of high-profile global data breaches, serious security flaws in myGov, the backlash against the data retention debacle, these things clearly don't exist in the eternal sunshine of the spotless Attorney General's department," Australian Greens Deputy Leader Senator Scott Ludlam said today.
"If you liked the Abbott/Shorten scheme to collect and cross-reference your call records and location history, you will be love Senator Brandis' plans for a national facial recognition ‘Capability'.
"Biometric information is unlike any other data. By its nature, it's uniquely tied to one person. What makes it valuable to law enforcement makes it devastating if that information is leaked or misused.
The ACT is the only State or Territory Government that has expressed concerns thus far.
"The current plan for a new hub to cross-match existing holdings of more than 100 million photographs is really just stage one: Government officials have admitted social media collections from Facebook and other platforms can already be added to the system. CCTV connections will inevitably follow."
"The only consolation is that this Australianised version of Skynet will suffer from slow data transfer rates as a consequence of the Government's preference for an obsolete NBN," Senator Ludlam concluded.
https://www.ag.gov.au/RightsAndProtections/IdentitySecurity/Pages/Biomet...