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WA gives away its citizens’ facial images

WA gives away its citizens’ facial images

WA will soon upload all its drivers’ licences to a central national database, so that facial ID can pick out suspects anywhere in the nation in an instant…whether the ‘match’ is accurate or not.

The parliament recently passed enabling local law, but there are no federal legal safeguards against abuse. The new system will allow anyone anywhere to identify you from a photo or other ID information.

WA Opposition innovation spokesman Zak Kirkup said he was concerned about privacy and the security capabilities of other state and territory agencies accessing the data. “The facial recognition information provided might be used by other government agencies,” he said.

“I have concerns about facial recognition. In the US there is documented evidence about facial recognition continuing to provide false positives and false negatives for people of minority races, and particularly African and Asian Americans.

“The hit rate of a greater false positive is woefully inadequate. It continues to fail in the US, particularly for the FBI, which runs a national database that continues to produce wrongful results.” https://tinyurl.com/y77ry4pp

CLA is particularly concerned about how politicians hand over people’s private information – a photo in this case – without consulting with the citizen and without legislated privacy protections.

In Tasmania, CLA has a petition and protests before the State Parliament over the issue.

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