fraudulent Warrants of Fitness (WOF)<\/a> a pattern of out-of-region vehicle ownership among delinquent Inspection Organisations (IOs) was revealed,\u201d the October report said.<\/p>\n\u201cDespite deploying resources to follow up on this lead, the inquiry yielded no actionable results, raising concerns about the efficiency of investigative methods and prompting questions about the underutilisation of available surveillance tools like vGrid.\u201d<\/p>\n
The vGrid tool is the platform used in the tests.<\/p>\n
It runs CCTV footage through ANPR \u2013 in this case, from cameras in the billboards of advertising company LUMO, and from other cameras run by Hamilton City Council, mostly at major intersections. LUMO has 69 ANPR cameras nationwide.<\/p>\n
Run by Auckland firm SaferCities, vGrid is already used by police to identify vehicle owners about a thousand times a day.<\/p>\n
RNZ revealed the WOF camera tests last July.<\/p>\n
The tests proved the agency got \u201cusable and valuable evidence for investigations\u201d this way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe platform yielded promising results, including successful data matches that would not have been otherwise obtainable,\u201d the October report said.<\/p>\n
NZTA only used it where it had a suspect garage it was targeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does not operate these [camera] networks and does not conduct mass surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Put on pause<\/p>\n
Fraudulent inspections \u201cpose serious safety risks\u201d, the report said.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the agency had hit stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe use of vGrid has been paused since mid-2025,\u201d it told RNZ.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the use of VGrid or similar tools could add an additional option to support investigation activity, NZTA is currently prioritising our finite regulatory resources in other areas,\u201d the agency said this week.<\/p>\n
It declined an interview.<\/p>\n
The investigation into out-of-region WOFs was ongoing so it couldn\u2019t be specific, it said.<\/p>\n
But in general, when it identified that a vehicle inspection service was doing a higher than average number of warrants on cars from outside its region, staff would contact the owner of the vehicle to find out if it was in the same place where the WOF was issued.<\/p>\n
\u201cTools like vGrid provide an alternative way of identifying whether a vehicle was in the same region as the inspecting organisation at the time the WOF was issued.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the agency has hundreds of its own speed-safety cameras nationwide, it would be \u201cinconsistent\u201d and an \u201cunauthorised secondary use\u201d to tap into these this way, its October report said.<\/p>\n
Use with care<\/p>\n
Number plates are regarded as personal information because they can show someone\u2019s movements. <\/p>\n
The police\u2019s widespread and growing use of ANPR is subject to legal challenge with a Court of Appeal ruling expected as early as next month.<\/p>\n
Waka Kotahi did the WOF camera tests first then, when it worked, got a privacy impact assessment done later in the October report.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecent Official Information Act (OIA) requests and commentary suggest that the public is particularly sensitive to issues of scope creep and mission drift, where surveillance tools are used beyond their originally stated purposes,\u201d the assessment said.<\/p>\n
If NZTA adopted vGrid, it must \u201censure that its use of surveillance technologies remains lawful, proportionate, and aligned with public expectations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Its use complied with privacy principles so long as there were safeguards, the assessment concluded.<\/p>\n
That should include minimising incidental footage of vehicle occupants. However, it noted the footage might be subject to the OIA.<\/p>\n
There must be \u201cclear boundaries for data use\u201d plus auditing to ensure the data at vGrid \u2013 which stored ANPR images in Australia \u2013 was secure.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly certification investigators involved in serious cases (eg, potential prosecution or authority revocation) may access footage,\u201d was one control suggested. Another was to retain the footage for a maximum of three months.<\/p>\n
ANPR systems often hold footage of a vehicle for six months.<\/p>\n
The assessment noted the agency had a transparency statement about data collection on its website. That statement did not mention ANPR but did mention CCTV. <\/p>\n
It also said, \u201cIn limited cases and with additional governance, management, and legal oversight\u201d the agency might collect information \u201cby observing regulated parties in public places\u201d. Regulated parties include WOF issuers.<\/p>\n
Should you be told?<\/p>\n
The impact assessment said NZTA was not \u201ccurrently required\u201d under privacy principles to tell individuals about the collection of their information where it had been collected from a third party.<\/p>\n
That was to change in May 2026, it noted, so the agency should be very open with the public about what it was doing on its website and through media.<\/p>\n
The fact it might adopt vGrid had been discussed with key vehicle inspection groups and the Motor Trade Association \u201cwho have all expressed support\u201d. It planned to formally engage with all inspectors if it adopted it.<\/p>\n
LUMO said, \u201cThere has been nothing new since and NZTA have not had access to the camera network since that trial\u201d.<\/p>\n
RNZ approached the council for comment.<\/p>\n
\u2018Increased effectiveness and efficiency\u2019<\/p>\n
NZTA spends almost $120 million a year monitoring inspection organisations like garages.<\/p>\n
It easily exceeded its target in 2024-25 of taking 3500 monitoring activities hitting almost 5400, according to its 2025-26 statement of expectations.<\/p>\n
It then lifted the target to 4000 \u201cto reflect our increased effectiveness and efficiency, and our strengthened approach\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut our level of delivery … is also resource dependent,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
How ANPR works<\/p>\n
The October report that contains the privacy impact assessment gave a primer on automated number plate recognition, which has spread countrywide in the last decade.<\/p>\n
Councils, businesses and community groups owned cameras – they are called \u201cproducers\u201d (of data). \u201cProducers must have a lawful basis under the Privacy Act to disclose personal information.\u201dThe Privacy Act allows information to be shared to prevent a serious safety risk – hence producers can share the data.They nominate \u201cusers\u201d as part of the disclosure chain.The users upload data to vGrid which processes it \u201cwithout using it for its own purposes\u201d.vGrid allows authorised parties – in this case NZTA – to retrieve and analyse data \u201cfrom a diverse range of sources such as CCTV cameras, mobile devices and drones\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cameras link to automated number plate recognition (ANPR) technology. WOF data is compared with ANPR records which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4548,138,16637,127,31510,3561,111,139,69,16488,147540,31341,21037,3502,61,3382,181941],"class_list":["post-456024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-billboard","tag-business","tag-cameras","tag-despite","tag-detect","tag-fraud","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nzta","tag-pauses","tag-pennington","tag-phil","tag-success","tag-to","tag-using","tag-wof"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}