Loss of Privacy

Quietly, the New South Wales government in Australia has been collecting data on its citizens with the goal being a compilation of every person’s face in the country. The need for such a system is argued to be so that every CCTV camera can recognize an individual as soon as they are captured on CCTV.

Experts said yesterday few people realised their facial features were being recorded in an RTA database of drivers licence photos that the Government has allowed both state and federal police to access

The federal body CrimTrac has asked NSW for its database so it can be mined nationally by police using the facial recognition information contained in it.

Problems will arise from such a monumental undertaking as facial recognition is not anywhere near 100% accuracy.

University experts in facial recognition said the correct match rate was as low as 90 per cent, meaning the names of people with faces sharing a similar structure to criminals could be returned in searches.

Dr Carolyn Semmler from the University of Adelaide said police wanted to eventually use facial recognition in smart CCTV cameras allowing people to be tracked anywhere there was a camera.

While some may say that they don’t care if their information is collected so long as it prevents crime, a 90% accuracy rate is not good enough. This means that in large cities, such as London, up to 3000 people per day are wrongly identified. Will you still understand when the police barge in your house at 3am and make you and your children lie face down on the floor because you’ve been pegged as a pedophile, rapist, drug dealer or terrorist?

NSW Opposition police spokesman Mike Gallacher said most people were unaware their face had been mapped when they applied for or had their licences renewed, allowing them to potentially be tracked.

There is a fundamental problem with the government when they freely invade people’s privacy and then neglect to tell them that it is even happening. The RTA has been compiling this new database since last December, meaning that anyone who has renewed their license in that time has had their facial features mapped and placed into the database.

While this is being done in the name of national security and the prevention of using driver’s licenses fraudulently, it is a huge invasion of privacy. Before removing residents’ civil liberties, there should have been debate and discussion. Instead, the New South Wales government felt it necessary to not inform anyone of what was occurring. This is, most likely, because no one would have wanted it.

Couple the facial recognition to CCTV with the GO card, and ANPR and you’ve got a very nice system that can personally track you every single step of your day. Everyone hopes that none of this technology will be abused, however, we’ve seen time and again that it can and is on a regular basis.

I don’t intentionally break the law. I do everything possible to preserve my privacy, but being tracked and misidentified is not something I can control. I cannot trust those with the power to not abuse it, leaving me with the only recourse possible. Everyone needs to write to their MPs now while there’s still a chance to change things.

Submission #1931 [Word doc] at the Australian Human Rights Commission is a proposal by the Australian branch of Scientology that aims to eliminate anonymity on the internet and the removal of critical websites.

The main focus of the proposal is the group, Anonymous, whom Scientology believes are out to destroy them.  Again and again, the proposal lists Anonymous as the target in unmasking their identities.  The summary of recommendations in the proposal are as follows;

Recommendation 1: The implementation of Criminal and Civil Restrictions on Religious Vilification.

Recommendation 2: Restriction on Anonymity on acts of Religious Vilification: 2.1 Websites created with primary purpose of inciting religious vilification shall be removed or their access to the Australian public restricted. 2.2 Creators of websites whose primary purpose is the incitement of religious vilification shall be prevented from concealing their identity.

Recommendation 3: Restriction on Religious Misinformation and Misrepresentation known or reasonably known to be untruthful in the Media

Recommendation 4: Include a form of Bill or Charter of Rights into the Australian Constitution, which prevents the Commonwealth from making any law, which ‘directly, indirectly or incidentally’ prohibits the free exercise of religion to the extent of such prohibition.”

While anyone can submit proposals it should be noted that the Church of Scientology is a group that relies heavily on peer pressure and has vast amounts of money to use against anyone who would consider speaking out against said group.  The proposal is the Church of Scientology’s desire to strip anonymity in order to more readily silence dissent.  This would eliminate the task of going through the courts to find out a person’s identity.

Scientology is not amused that people can criticize their beliefs and is asking the Australian government to do their job for them.  If Scientology wants to find out who is criticizing them, they should go through the already established legal channels to do so.  They should not expect governments to participate in helping a “religion” find dissenters.

If you have the guts to post one of the hyperlinks on Australia’s banned list, the Australian communications regulator says they will fine you AU$11,000.  Wikileaks, whom the Australian communications regulator hates so much, has several pages of their site listed due to Australia being unhappy with them for posting Denmark’s banned sites list.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA – an anti-abortion website.

Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government’s censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.

“The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship,” Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

The site has also published Thailand’s internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions.

Here again, we have sites being added to the blacklists that should not be and the public isn’t supposed to know what sites are blacklisted.  It is commonly known that this type of censorship is begun by claiming to be “saving the children,” but it quickly descends to stifle free speech and anything else a government doesn’t want its people to talk of or be informed about.   Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has already stated, on the record, that he hopes the porn industry will go broke as a result of the blacklist.  This entire scheme is politically motivated and has little to do with actually protecting the citizens of Australia.

Australia, like many other countries, already have laws to combat child pornography and anything else that is illegal online.  There is no need to have this blacklist to being with.  Child porn is not so rampant that children are being bombarded with it everywhere they turn when they are online.  Child porn and illegal activities online are something that people, including children, have to seek out.  It doesn’t come knocking at your door.

Australians are worried over their government’s new, massive car surveillance system that could lead to a vast database of their movements.

State and federal police forces want full-frontal images of vehicles, including the driver and front passenger, that are clear enough for identification purposes and usable as evidence in court.

So, now, by simply being a passenger in a car, the government will say you have given implied consent to be photographed and watched, simply because you wanted a lift.

“All vehicles passing through a fixed or mobile ANPR camera will have the data recorded and available for interrogation,” CrimTrac told the Queensland TravelSafe inquiry into the use of ANPR for road safety.

Who will have access to this information?  Is it only law enforcement or will it be available via freedom of information requests?  Will you be able to request your own file and be able to rectify any errors in said file?

“Existing camera applications, such as Safe-T-Cam, red light and speed cameras could be upgraded where necessary to provide constant live streaming to a central database.

Why is it necessary to constantly watch every single person in your jurisdiction?  Seriously, is there any reason, other than the “big brother” implications, that make such systems necessary?

“National connectivity would be achieved through secure digital networks for fixed cameras. Law enforcement agencies would also use mobile units.”

“As a public surveillance system that could be linked to facial recognition, this has enough technology behind it to impinge on everybody’s daily life,” Mr Vaile said.

“CrimTrac has told us there will be 5000 cameras around the country, overwhelmingly in populated areas, taking some 70 million photos every day.

“If you use the main roads, you’re likely to be snapped several times a day, and all those photos and any related data will be held by CrimTrac for up to five years.”

Mr Vaile said it was false to represent the proposal as number plate recognition: “It’s a photograph-all-drivers system.”

A person cannot be truly free if he cannot travel and move unimpeded.

Should the state and federal ministers agree on a nationwide system, planning and building it would take a number of years to complete, Mr Booy said.

Good, that will leave plenty of time for Australians to protest against this technology.

A VicRoads and Victoria Police trial had encountered problems with the accuracy and timeliness of information.

“There may be missing or incomplete fields in data sets, which means the software may flag a vehicle that is legitimately registered,” VicRoads chief executive Gary Liddle said.

And, before you think it won’t happen to you, it will, and then you’ll have to deal with being in a database until and/or if it ever gets sorted out.

These cameras are not being put in to protect the public.  They are being installed to make money for the city.  So, why the fuss?  Why should you worry?  What happens when you happen to be in an area where a murder is committed and you are classified as a suspect.  Sure, you’re released because you didn’t do it, but, years later, you try to find a job or move neighborhoods and people will whisper, “oh that’s the guy that was arrested for murder,” and “did he get away with it?”  How much is that going to affect your life?  Think about it.

Remember, the 9/11 terrorists walked by many security cameras and were not stopped.  London is one of the most surveilled cities in the world and even they couldn’t prevent the London Bombings.