Security vs spying: Facial recognition CCTV goes from sci-fi to real life

FOR a long time, facial recognition was the stuff of sci-fi movies — a foreign, futuristic concept of an even “Bigger Brother” regime that many people struggled to wrap their heads around.

But the future has already arrived, arguably even before people fully understand how the technology works, how much safer it could make us, and any broader ramifications impinging on the privacy of citizens.

Facial recognition software has gone from being the technology of a distant tomorrow to the technology of right now in many parts of the world, including WA, bringing the debate of “security versus spying” into focus.

An expert in this emerging field, University of NSW research fellow Dr David White, said the technology worked by comparing two images — a “queried image” from a CCTV camera or at an Australian border against one from a database such as a police mugshot or passport photo. This creates a unique facial signature, similar to the more common biometrics field of fingerprints.

“It’s a complex pattern which maybe, for example, takes into consideration the distance between facial features, the general shape of the face or even skin texture.”

He said facial recognition was “far from foolproof”, and was particularly flawed when using lower-quality CCTV images and when conducting a “one in many” search. “People have a right to know how it’s being used and they also have a right to know how accurate the system is,” he said.

Australian Privacy Foundation chairman David Vaile said this “intrusive” technology had a worrying failure rate, sometimes up to 15 to 20 per cent. To put that into context, he said facial recognition being used at the MCG on grand final day in a bid to pick one person out in a crowd of 100,000 could return 15,000 to 20,000 “false positives”.

“No one can now promise that they can look after your digital networked information so they’re creating another honey pot, that may end up being fed into all other sorts of Federal and State systems with limited oversight. There’s a risk it gets abused,” he said.

Dr White said people needed to realise humans had to make the final decisions about how accurate this technology was by trawling through potential matches, and research indicated people made errors in every second identification decision.

The Turnbull Government is trying to get legislation through Parliament that would allow the Home Affairs Department to store the biometric data of Australians in a central facial recognition hub and then share it with other government agencies, prompting alarm from law experts and civil libertarians about a lack of oversight, safeguards and the risk of “scope creep”.

Police Minister Michelle Roberts said the WA Government would participate in the national scheme, which would allow States and Territories to access passport, visa, citizenship and driver’s licence facial images to support law enforcement.

She said the State Government would introduce a Bill into Parliament “once all issues have been resolved” to allow WA to share its driver’s licence photos of its citizens. WA Police would have “extensive input” in the development of the hub, to ensure appropriate safeguards were in place.

“The capability will assist Australian police identify people who are criminal suspects, including terrorism suspects,” Ms Roberts said.

Law Council of Australia president Morry Bailes recently told Federal Parliament he feared the proposed scheme could be open to abuse, interfere with people’s right to privacy and be used as a tool to catch people for minor unlawful activity. He was also concerned it could target people based on race, ethnicity or religion.

Civil Liberties Australia president Kristin Klugman told Parliament: “To override a person’s consent in the name of safety and security is not respecting Australian adults; it is treating them as you would a child and so is the very definition of paternalism ... it is only a matter of time before obscuring one’s face in public becomes a crime.”