Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. In
Speaker 1: Western Australia, police have just started trialing a technology that
Speaker 1: can identify people as they walk past a marked police
Speaker 1: fan will scan faces outside major events, cross checking them
Speaker 1: against a watch list of people want to buy authorities,
Speaker 1: police states targeted and that innocent people have nothing to fear.
Speaker 1: But once this kind of surveillance has switched on, the
Speaker 1: question becomes how far it spreads and who decides when
Speaker 1: it stops. Today, University of New South Wales cybersecurity expert
Speaker 1: Professor Richard Bucklin on the scope creep of live facial
Speaker 1: recognition and the danger of normalizing police powers before the
Speaker 1: public understands them. It's Tuesday, June twenty three.
Speaker 2: Our custom built facial recognition VAN, which is going to
Speaker 2: be used to assist police operations. VAN has a number
Speaker 2: of features inside it, including a computer system which processes
Speaker 2: images from high quality cameras, which then compares those images
Speaker 2: against the database.
Speaker 1: Richard. WA Police have announced a trial of live facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology. What can you tell us about the technology
Speaker 1: and how will this trial work?
Speaker 3: So this is a very limited trial they've announced, It's
Speaker 3: just in one van. Which will be marked, saying according
Speaker 3: to the images we've seen that there's facial recognition running
Speaker 3: and how it works is they are looking for particular
Speaker 3: people in this case, so they've got presumably a database
Speaker 3: somewhere of faces of people feed a certain category and
Speaker 3: they're trying to see if any of those people walk
Speaker 3: past the van.
Speaker 4: Important thing for us in our police force working with
Speaker 4: our community is transparency and public safety. That's why the
Speaker 4: has police written on the side. It has very clear
Speaker 4: signage about what it's doing.
Speaker 3: And the categories that've mentioned are people who are wanted
Speaker 3: for domestic plots, known sex offenders, so pretty reprehensible people
Speaker 3: and the sort of people you'd really want the police
Speaker 3: to be able to catch, and it would seem reasonable
Speaker 3: that they'd be out in public looking for these people.
Speaker 4: This is not about mass surveillance. This is about specifying
Speaker 4: those in our community who are wanted by police because
Speaker 4: there is an arrest warrant out for them, who are
Speaker 4: on sex offender lists, who should not be in the vicinity,
Speaker 4: particularly of young children. But it's also about helping missing
Speaker 4: people as.
Speaker 3: We understand it. They're obviously a bit cooe about the details,
Speaker 3: but the images are scanned in real time. If there's
Speaker 3: a match, then the recording is left showing those faces
Speaker 3: and the police are alerted in real time, presumely in
Speaker 3: the van, and then the other faces that don't match
Speaker 3: anyone on this list are pixelated.
Speaker 4: This is actually a way that we can increase the
Speaker 4: freedoms and the privacy of our community.
Speaker 1: The Police commissioner says, this is actually a less intrusive
Speaker 1: option than what police currently rely on, which is CCTV
Speaker 1: footage from private citizens.
Speaker 5: Look, I've always been concerned about the spread of CCTV
Speaker 5: around our community, particularly the ownership of the cameras where
Speaker 5: the information stored. How long this story. We don't even
Speaker 5: know half these cameras and who's using them.
Speaker 1: What do you make of that argument?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's the argument that we always hear
Speaker 3: with privacy related things. I'm sure the police will continue
Speaker 3: using the methods that they currently have, so there's in
Speaker 3: no sense is adding this into the mix less intrusive.
Speaker 3: It's actually widening the range of surveillance powers they have.
Speaker 3: The argument's not going to the harder things for a
Speaker 3: number of reasons. It is certainly the case that the
Speaker 3: police will use this to catch people that everyone agrees
Speaker 3: should be caught. The problem isn't with the software doing
Speaker 3: its job, So the problem is what are the consequences
Speaker 3: to everyone else? What's a consequence to a society of
Speaker 3: having cameras everywhere? And if this continues on this trajectory,
Speaker 3: then this software now could be used once the trials
Speaker 3: run and everyone's happy with the trial which achieved its snublanes,
Speaker 3: it could then be used to monitor everyone everywhere in
Speaker 3: a way we've never had before. Once you've got technology
Speaker 3: able to do something, then everyone sits around think of
Speaker 3: reasons and ways you can use it to do other things.
Speaker 3: And this is scope creep and we see this over
Speaker 3: and over again with privacy. So the example I'm really
Speaker 3: familiar with is in New South Wales, we had a
Speaker 3: trial of cameras to detect people using mobile phones because
Speaker 3: a lot of road safety data, as I'm sure everyone knows,
Speaker 3: shows that mobile phone usage by the driver was involved
Speaker 3: in a frightening number of accidents that caused harm to
Speaker 3: lots of other people, innocent people when the drive was
Speaker 3: using it. So they put these cameras in locations and
Speaker 3: they're very high resolution that can detect if someone's using
Speaker 3: a mobile phone. It was a success. It identified lots
Speaker 3: of people using the phone as. On the basis of
Speaker 3: that successful identification, those cameras have been rolled out and
Speaker 3: they're increasingly appearing around New South Wales. But the scope
Speaker 3: creep happened when someone said, we've got this footage, what
Speaker 3: else can we use it for? We can easily see
Speaker 3: if someone's wearing a seat belt using this, So now
Speaker 3: those cameras are used for seat belt offenses not wearing
Speaker 3: a seat belt. Sure, it's still a good thing to do,
Speaker 3: I guess, but the difference is with a mobile phone.
Speaker 3: The argument in the trial was you can kill innocent people.
Speaker 3: Other people suffer from you breaking this law. If you're
Speaker 3: not wearing a seat belt, you're probably the only one
Speaker 3: that's going to suffer from not wearing a seat belt.
Speaker 3: It won't go back to the public and it won't
Speaker 3: be tested again. It's now they've got that capability. It
Speaker 3: can be used for other things, and this is I guess,
Speaker 3: what's scaring and why it's always good to check back
Speaker 3: after a short period of time what the thing's being
Speaker 3: used for and by someone independent. Is this in line
Speaker 3: with our intents and values right now?
Speaker 1: They're using for this trial a very clearly marked police fan.
Speaker 1: Police haven't ruled out using this in a more covert
Speaker 1: form and future including a protests. How does that change
Speaker 1: the equation compared to what was originally being trialed.
Speaker 3: You're spot on. If it's used at protests, for example, imagine,
Speaker 3: you know, we're back in the old days where it
Speaker 3: was illegal to be home sexual at criminal offense. Then
Speaker 3: if there was a protest for gay rights. Having a
Speaker 3: camera they're identifying people in real time, you know, obviously
Speaker 3: means that a database can be built of people. Now
Speaker 3: you could argue, well, we could have the camera and
Speaker 3: not recorded in real time. You know, we could have
Speaker 3: the camera and analyzi this later, but that's a much
Speaker 3: bigger job once you've got to you know, you probably
Speaker 3: know yourself. If you get a book and read, it's easy.
Speaker 3: But if you put it in that pile of books
Speaker 3: and that pol just gets bigger and bigger and bigger,
Speaker 3: it's much harder to search. So giving people real time
Speaker 3: capability to update databases means you could identify people who
Speaker 3: are violating the law, even when perhaps it's not a
Speaker 3: law we're totally happy with, and it's a chilling effect
Speaker 3: really on your ability to protest, like we saw in
Speaker 3: China and Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: Coming up, how facial recognition technology is being used elsewhere
Speaker 1: in Australia and the world, Richard, what can you tell
Speaker 1: us about how this technology has been used by police
Speaker 1: and other parts of the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in the States, they do a lot of
Speaker 3: facial recognition stuff, and it's being used to identify people
Speaker 3: that the police are interested in and because they've had
Speaker 3: a long history of doing that. But I do think
Speaker 3: the big problem in the States is the chilling effect
Speaker 3: that you would now be frightened to protest against things
Speaker 3: you might think are egregious. And then there's this other question,
Speaker 3: which is once your movements are tracked and known and
Speaker 3: that data is stored somewhere, who has access to this.
Speaker 3: So in the States, there are examples where the police,
Speaker 3: individuals insiders inside the police, use it for tracking their spouse,
Speaker 3: use it for finding spouses who have escaped them for
Speaker 3: family violence.
Speaker 6: Reasons are of DIA's office. As this former coast to
Speaker 6: me as a police officer, not only is these flot
Speaker 6: cameras to track his mistress, her new boyfriends, as well
Speaker 6: as his current wife, but also use confidential law enforcement
Speaker 6: systems to be able to run people a number of
Speaker 6: times that had nothing to do with his work.
Speaker 3: One police officer used it to track down and date
Speaker 3: someone he thought was interesting and work out where they
Speaker 3: lived and where they went, and all sorts of things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 7: Have a former Milwaukee police officer pleading guilty today to
Speaker 7: a misdemeanor. It comes after court record show Joe suay
Speaker 7: Ayala seerves the locations of his girlfriend and her boyfriend
Speaker 7: more than one hundred and seventy times using Milwaukee Police
Speaker 7: Department's license plate reading technology.
Speaker 3: So even if the government and the police as an
Speaker 3: organization say they're going to look after the data and
Speaker 3: it's been used for good purposes, of course individuals have
Speaker 3: access to the data. And then the extension of that
Speaker 3: is if they break into this database. So the criminals.
Speaker 1: Richard Now, a Florida man, is suing police after II
Speaker 1: facial recognition technology led to his wrongful arrest. How lockily
Speaker 1: a situations lot that to arise with his technolog.
Speaker 3: Technology always makes mistakes. The only way of stopping it
Speaker 3: making mistakes is spending more money and often to reduce
Speaker 3: mistakes by a lot costs a huge amount. More So,
Speaker 3: usually we solve mistakes by shifting them from one type
Speaker 3: of mistake to the other. So the type one and
Speaker 3: type two mistakes that this software can make. One is
Speaker 3: where it wrongfully identifies an innocent person as being a
Speaker 3: bad person, and the other mistake is where a bad
Speaker 3: person doesn't get properly identified. And really there's a knoll
Speaker 3: almost on the software that you can choose where you
Speaker 3: set it. If you set it too far, if you're
Speaker 3: too determined to catch all the criminals and not let
Speaker 3: anyone through, then it will wrongfully identify a range of.
Speaker 1: People with this technology. Richard, what about racial bias, because
Speaker 1: there's been an issue with technology like this in the
Speaker 1: past not really taking into account the diversity within communities. Well,
Speaker 1: what can you say to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, most of the data sets that things have been
Speaker 3: trained on are white, middle class white males and a
Speaker 3: high profile people in disadvantaged groups, minority groups in America,
Speaker 3: people with perhaps disabilities. You know, you could just imagine,
Speaker 3: I haven't trained it on everyone in the world. If
Speaker 3: your training data isn't good enough, it's making a guess
Speaker 3: based on what it's seen. So yeah, absolutely, there's all
Speaker 3: these sort of biases in the software, and even facial
Speaker 3: recognition with human makes mistakes. It's not a very good
Speaker 3: way of identifying people.
Speaker 1: Another one of the police commissioners arguments was that this
Speaker 1: technology is already being used out in the community. How
Speaker 1: widespread is this both inside and outside of policing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it, it is been Can I just
Speaker 3: say that's not a brilliant argument. My children try that one.
Speaker 1: Everyone's doing it is the idea.
Speaker 3: Everyone's doing it, so I can I mean, this is
Speaker 3: I guess just taking a quick diversion. This is really
Speaker 3: the problem with the cameras. You put your finger on
Speaker 3: it in a nutshell, that we're slowly drifting by a
Speaker 3: series of incremental steps, and at every point we can
Speaker 3: make an argument that if you don't look at it
Speaker 3: too carefully, you think, oh, that's reasonable. But as we
Speaker 3: make step by step by step, people's privacy and ability
Speaker 3: to live a life not being surveiled is diminished, and
Speaker 3: arguments then are, well, you've already lost it, so we
Speaker 3: can just keep doing it. So this incremental drift is
Speaker 3: actually quite scary. Visual capture is very widespread. There's cameras everywhere.
Speaker 3: If we take it step by step, including lots of
Speaker 3: private cameras pointing onto the street. It's very hard to
Speaker 3: walk around in Sydney. If you drive down the road
Speaker 3: to the Blue Mountains. It used to be one surveillance
Speaker 3: camera at the beginning. There's now one every two hundred meters.
Speaker 3: I don't know how they got the budget to do that.
Speaker 3: So then there's facial recognition applied to recordings, and that
Speaker 3: is not so widely done by people that's more forensic people,
Speaker 3: but real time facial recognition that has commercial advantages and
Speaker 3: people do use that. And Bunnings and Kmarts as a
Speaker 3: famous case that happened recently, where they were using it
Speaker 3: to identify people that would be abusive to their staff,
Speaker 3: or people that committed very sorts of fraud either check
Speaker 3: out fraud not scanning things, or people who made multiple
Speaker 3: fraudulent returns and plaim money back on items they hadn't
Speaker 3: brought in the store.
Speaker 8: Some of the most popular retailers are being accused of
Speaker 8: invading customers privacy by installing facial recognition cameras in their stores. Kmart,
Speaker 8: Bunnings and the good guys have been blasted by This.
Speaker 3: Was met with a lot of public shock that they
Speaker 3: were recording people and identifying people without telling them.
Speaker 8: Kmart has been found to have breached privacy laws in
Speaker 8: its use of facial recognition technology in stores across the country.
Speaker 9: Bunnings has been given the green light to use facial
Speaker 9: recognition technology across its stores. The hardware giant maintains it
Speaker 9: will only use the technology to prevent shoplifting and protect staff.
Speaker 9: It won an appeal in the Administrative Review Tribunal following
Speaker 9: an earlier ruling that it breached customer privacy.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, it is being used, and I would expect
Speaker 3: unless there is a stop to it. If we just
Speaker 3: keep saying yeah, that sounds reasonable, we could eventually live
Speaker 3: in an all willing world wherever you go, you're recognized
Speaker 3: and noticed, Your movements are known. And that's so obvious
Speaker 3: from some people, witness protection plans, people who are trying
Speaker 3: to hide from abusive partners, people are trying to whistle blow.
Speaker 3: We've seen some whistleblowing happening recently, the KP and G
Speaker 3: case that are now saying they wouldn't whistle blow again,
Speaker 3: that the fact of surveillance is actually enough to stop
Speaker 3: people wanting to speak out. So yeah, So the world
Speaker 3: we're moving into if this is allowed, would be a
Speaker 3: very different world, and it'd be good for us to
Speaker 3: stop and think, is this what we want to.
Speaker 1: That effect Richard, this is a trial, but history shows
Speaker 1: us that when police are given powers that those powers
Speaker 1: are usually extended. So what checks and balances are currently
Speaker 1: in place to sure that there isn't overreach with this technology?
Speaker 3: My understanding, and I could be wrong, is very little.
Speaker 3: We've got some words saying this is what we're going
Speaker 3: to use it for now. And credit to the police
Speaker 3: commissioner for saying this. Most commissioners of police in most
Speaker 3: acts do this stuff under the radar as much as
Speaker 3: they can. It's really good that he spoke about what
Speaker 3: they're doing, and he has spoken about their intentions, but
Speaker 3: he's refused to rule out other intentions. I mean, the
Speaker 3: things you'd like to see an independent review after a
Speaker 3: short period of time, constraints on what the surveillance could involve,
Speaker 3: the sorts of things we saw in COVID when the
Speaker 3: government tried to bring out the contact tracing app and
Speaker 3: there was a lot of alarm that the government would
Speaker 3: get an it's location data in real time. The government
Speaker 3: then put a whole lot of quite good restrictions on
Speaker 3: how it could be used with the sunset clause, and
Speaker 3: it would be good to see this sort of thing,
Speaker 3: but it's very hard to get anyone to put constraints
Speaker 3: on the police. Really, both sides of politics almost outdo
Speaker 3: themselves for giving the police extra powers. I would hope
Speaker 3: that there will be a review, an independent review. I
Speaker 3: would hope there'll be restrictions on who can see the data.
Speaker 3: I would hope there'd be requirements about the data being
Speaker 3: stored in a way that insiders inside the police can't
Speaker 3: access it, and that accessing get reviewed. I would hope
Speaker 3: that the data be encrypted in a reasonable way so
Speaker 3: if packers break in, they can't access the data. I
Speaker 3: would hope recording would be destroyed, and no one ever
Speaker 3: likes destroying data, so they won't unless forced to destroy it,
Speaker 3: they'll keep it. And then the last thing is a pixelation.
Speaker 3: There should be leglas restrictions, not just down to the
Speaker 3: current way it's done, saying this pixelation has to happen
Speaker 3: either on the camera or on device, but certainly before
Speaker 3: any recording is made, so there is no way someone
Speaker 3: can ever get hold of the unpixelated version. It's not
Speaker 3: good enough to say, oh, we promise, we never will,
Speaker 3: or we have checks and balances in places sure and
Speaker 3: never will. There should be an independent order to make
Speaker 3: sure you can't get anyone else's idea.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much, Richard. We should note that
Speaker 1: the police say that they won't store the data Reustralians
Speaker 1: who aren't on their wanted lists. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: what could possibly go wrong? Richard, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your time.
Speaker 3: Thanks Daniel.
Speaker 1: In the news, Ingham's has announced a complete lockdown in
Speaker 1: western Australia after a second case of H five in
Speaker 1: one bird flu was confirmed. So far, the cases have
Speaker 1: been contained to wild birds, but experts fear the outbreak
Speaker 1: may be larger than we know, with more than fifty
Speaker 1: calls to a hotline reporting sick and dead birds. Before
Speaker 1: the cases, Australia had been the only continent free of
Speaker 1: the virus, which has killed millions of birds and thousands
Speaker 1: of mammals. And Zale's DEGO has reportedly set to launch
Speaker 1: a new party as soon as this week. After months
Speaker 1: of secret talks about a seal party, the Independent MP
Speaker 1: is apparently ready to pull the trigger. It may initially
Speaker 1: be a party of one, but Allegras Bender, Sophie Scomps,
Speaker 1: and Nicolette Bulla are all reportedly open to joining. I'm
Speaker 1: Daniel James. Thanks for listening to seven AM. We'll be
Speaker 1: back tomorrow