\u201cThe OIC WA is aware of the trial but was not invited to participate in any formal consultation process with WA Police and did not provide input into the design of the trial,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u2018This is not about mass surveillance\u2019<\/p>\n
Blanch said the van displayed visible signage and the technology did not retain data on ordinary citizens, pixelating people not in the database.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about mass surveillance,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is about specifying those in the community who are wanted by police \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is actually a way that we can increase the freedoms and the privacy of our community. This is less of an intrusive capability than a standard CCTV camera.\u201d<\/p>\n
The OIC WA challenged the claim that short-term processing exempted the technology from scrutiny, saying that \u201ceven where this information is only held for a very short time, it is still a collection and obligations attach to that activity\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n Prof Dali Kaafar, the executive director of the Macquarie University cyber security hub, labels the commissioner\u2019s comparison to standard security cameras a \u201cfalse equivalence\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole point of live facial recognition is that it identifies people, and generic CCTV doesn\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cThe underlying reality is that every face in the crowd is being captured, processed and biometrically matched against a database. That is not what CCTV does.\u201d<\/p>\n The OIC WA highlighted data from the 2026 Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey<\/a>, showing 45% of Australians now consider facial recognition to be the biggest privacy risk they face \u2013 up from 27% in 2023. Public comfort with police using biometrics in public safety settings is on a downward trend, slipping to 57%.<\/p>\n Accuracy and algorithmic bias<\/p>\n Police acknowledged two false alerts during the first week \u2013 relying on a \u201chuman in the loop\u201d to manually verify matches before acting \u2013 and experts warn that real-world environments degrade the technology\u2019s accuracy.<\/p>\n The OIC WA note that the potential for false matches resulting in \u201cunwarranted interventions\u201d remains a significant risk, particularly when images are captured in variable conditions.<\/p>\n Commercial vendors may claim laboratory accuracy rates exceeding 99%, but experts say public deployments tell a different story.<\/p>\n \u201cThe devil is in the detail, with accuracy dropping to about 90% to 95% in uncontrolled conditions,\u201d says Prof Katina Michael, an expert in biometric surveillance at the University of Sydney. \u201cFactors like variable lighting, crowd density, camera angles, motion blur, and the weather \u2026 error rates increase according to the amount of \u2018noise\u2019 in the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Adam Andreotta, a business ethics lecturer at Curtin University, says that even a seemingly minor 10% error rate has massive consequences when applied to large crowds.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen thousands of people walk by, a 10% mistake rate is obviously not good, it means a significant number of innocent people could be stopped, questioned or detained for things they didn\u2019t do,\u201d Andreotta says.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | When needed<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Many facial recognition algorithms suffer from higher false-match rates for women, younger people and individuals with darker skin tones, studies show. Photograph: Aaron Bunch\/AAP<\/p>\n A primary concern among academics is the well-documented issue of algorithmic bias. Independent tests by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have historically shown<\/a> that many facial recognition algorithms suffer from significantly higher false-match rates for women, younger people and individuals with darker skin tones.<\/p>\n \u201cMultiple studies show African and Asian faces are wrongly matched at rates 10 to 100 times higher than white faces on some systems,\u201d Kaafar says.<\/p>\n In an Australian context, experts say this bias will disproportionately impact marginalised groups, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who are already overrepresented on police databases.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the watchlist is already skewed toward a group, both the correct matches and the false matches will hit that group harder,\u201d Kaafar says.<\/p>\n \u2018Function creep\u2019<\/p>\n Critics and regulators are also deeply concerned by \u201cfunction creep\u201d \u2013 the gradual expansion of a technology\u2019s deployment beyond its original boundaries. The OIC WA warns that shifting the trial towards covert deployments or integrating it into widespread, fixed CCTV networks would \u201csignificantly increase privacy risks\u201d.<\/p>\n Michael notes that Australia still lacks federal or state legislation strictly dedicated to police live biometric surveillance that could safeguard against function creep.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout binding limits on watchlist criteria, data retention and permitted use cases set in laws and regulations \u2026 this expansion is a foreseeable risk, not a hypothetical one,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The OIC WA says the trial will serve as an early test for the state\u2019s Privacy<\/a> and Responsible Information Sharing Act 2024 (PRIS Act). It is the first law in Australia to explicitly regulate the use of personal information in automated decision-making. Under the act, WA police are required to assess the risks of bias, harm and discrimination in their automated systems and prove they are being managed. The act also mandates that a formal privacy impact assessment (PIA) be completed for high-risk projects.<\/p>\n Police won\u2019t rule out using the live facial recognition van at public protests. Photograph: Aaron Bunch\/AAP<\/p>\n The OIC WA confirmed it was now actively \u201cmonitoring and requesting information\u201d from police about the trial to ensure compliance and shape future biometrics policies.<\/p>\n Blanch has refused to rule out using the live facial recognition van at public protests, saying it would depend on intelligence regarding significant risks of harm.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce real-time face-scanning is normalised at major events, expanding it to protests, then to routine deployment, then to covert deployment, [it] becomes a matter of policy nudges rather than a fundamental shift,\u201d Kaafar says.<\/p>\n Commercial v public surveillance<\/p>\n The legal landscape for facial recognition in the private sector is shifting.<\/p>\n The retail giants Bunnings<\/a> and Kmart<\/a> faced scrutiny<\/a> when the national privacy commissioner ruled they had breached the privacy of customers by scanning them to curb theft and fraud. The ruling against Bunnings was overturned<\/a> on appeal in February.<\/p>\n Unlike retail shoppers, people walking through public entertainment precincts cannot easily choose to take their business elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t just tell people it is happening via a sign,\u201d Andreotta says. \u201cIf the public doesn\u2019t fully understand the long-term risks of biometric collection and function creep, they aren\u2019t giving meaningful consent.\u201d<\/p>\n The OIC WA notes that unlike credit card numbers, compromised biometric data cannot be easily changed or replaced, making it a \u201chigher-risk category of personal information\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2998.jpg\")
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