ADVOCACY, POLICY & NEWS
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Discussing the national facial recognition database
On Monday, 9th October, our Executive Officer Jon Lawrence spoke with Steve Austin on ABC Radio Brisbane about the decision by COAG to implement a comprehensive national facial recognition database including photos from all Australian driver’s licences and the threats this ‘Capability’ poses to civil liberties. Listen to the interview…
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Let’s face it, we’ll be no safer with a national facial recognition database
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…
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Comprehensive national face database incompatible with a free society
Australia’s leading privacy and civil liberties organisations condemn the decision by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to provide all images from state and territory driver’s licence databases to the federal National Facial Biometric Matching Capability. These organisations are the Australian Privacy Foundation, Digital Rights Watch, Queensland Council for Civil…
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AGM 2017: documents published; Board election starts today.
All supporting documents for the 2017 AGM, including the Proxy Form, are now available on our 2017 AGM page. The AGM will be held (on Internet Relay Chat) at 15:00 AEDT on Sunday 8th October 2017. Proxy forms are due by 12:00 AEDT on Sunday 8th October 2017. The voting…
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National Facial Recognition: towards the Panopticon
The latest mass shooting in Las Vegas over the weekend has provided an opportunity for Prime Minister Turnbull to increase focus on the National Facial Biometric Matching Capability at the Coalition of Australian Governments counter-terror meeting scheduled to occur tomorrow (5th October). The Attorney General’s Department states that the National…
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Why the marriage equality poll is a privacy issue
What is it about August 9th? Last year it was that evening of national beating-your-head-against-your-laptop as the Census website went down, and stayed down. This year, the government decided the mark the anniversary of #censusfail by handing the architects of that omnishambles, the ABS, the hospital pass of 2017: responsibility…