Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Daniel James and you're listening to 7am.
Chapter 2: What is the new facial recognition technology being trialed by police in Western Australia?
In Western Australia, police have just started trialling a technology that can identify people as they walk past. A marked police van will scan faces outside major events, cross-checking them against a watch list of people wanted by authorities. Police say it's targeted and that innocent people have nothing to fear.
But once this kind of surveillance is switched on, the question becomes how far it spreads and who decides when it stops. Today, University of New South Wales cyber security expert Professor Richard Buckland on the scope creep of live facial recognition and the danger of normalising police powers before the public understands them.
Chapter 3: How does the live facial recognition van operate during the trial?
It's Tuesday, June 23.
This is our custom-built live facial recognition van, which is going to be used to assist police operations. The van has a number of features inside it, including a computer system which processes images from high-quality cameras, which then compares those images against a database.
Richard, WA Police have announced a trial of live facial recognition technology. What can you tell us about the technology and how will this trial work?
So this is a very limited trial they've announced.
Chapter 4: What concerns arise regarding the transparency and safety of this technology?
It's just in one van which will be marked saying, according to the images we've seen, that there's facial recognition running. And how it works is they are looking for particular people in this case. So they've got presumably a database somewhere of people faces of people that fit a certain category and they're trying to see if any of those people walk past the van.
The important thing for us in our police force working with our community is transparency and public safety. That's why the van has police written on the side. It has very clear signage about what it's doing.
And the categories they've mentioned are people who are wanted for domestic violence, known sex offenders. So pretty reprehensible people and the sort of people you'd really want the police to be able to catch. And it would seem reasonable that they'd be out in public looking for these people.
This is not about mass surveillance. This is about specifying those in our community who are wanted by police because there is an arrest warrant out for them, who are on sex offender lists, who should not be in the vicinity, particularly of young children. But it's also about helping missing people.
As we understand it, they're obviously a bit coy about the details, but the images are scanned in real time. If there's a match, then the recording is left showing those faces and the police are alerted in real time, presumably in the van. And then the other faces that don't match anyone on this list are pixelated.
This is actually a way that we can increase the freedoms and the privacy of our community.
The police commissioner says this is actually a less intrusive option than what police currently rely on, which is CCTV footage from private citizens.
Look, I've always been concerned about the spread of CCTV around our community, particularly the ownership of the cameras, where the information's stored, how long they're stored. We don't even know half these cameras and who's using them.
What do you make of that argument? Yeah, I mean, it's the argument that we always hear with privacy-related things. I'm sure the police will continue using the methods that they currently have, so there's in no sense is adding this into the mix less intrusive.
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Chapter 5: What is the potential for scope creep with facial recognition technology?
It's actually widening the range of surveillance powers they have. The argument's not going to the heart of things for a number of reasons. It is certainly the case that the police will use this to catch people that everyone agrees should be caught. The problem isn't with the software doing its job. The problem is what are the consequences to everyone else?
What's the consequence to a society of having cameras everywhere? And if this goes, continues on this trajectory, then this software now could be used once the trials run and everyone's happy with the trial, which achieved its no-blame. It could then be used to monitor everyone everywhere in a way we've never had before.
Once you've got technology able to do something, then everyone sits around thinking of reasons and ways you can use it to do other things. And this is scope creep.
Chapter 6: How has facial recognition technology been implemented in other parts of the world?
And we see this over and over again with privacy. So the example I'm really familiar with is in New South Wales,
we had a trial of cameras to detect people using mobile phones because a lot of road safety data, as I'm sure everyone knows, shows that mobile phone usage by the driver was involved in a frightening number of accidents that caused harm to lots of other people, innocent people, when the driver was using it.
So they put these cameras in locations and they're very high resolution that can detect if someone's using a mobile phone. It was a success. It identified lots of people using the phone as on the basis of that successful identification, those cameras have been rolled out and they're increasingly appearing around New South Wales.
But the scope creep happened when someone said, we've got this footage, what else can we use it for? We can easily see if someone's wearing a seatbelt using this. So now those cameras are used for seatbelt offences, not wearing a seatbelt. Sure, it's still a good thing to do, I guess, but the difference is with a mobile phone, the argument in the trial was you can kill innocent people.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of wrongful arrests due to facial recognition errors?
Other people suffer from you breaking this law. If you're not wearing a seatbelt, you're probably the only one that's going to suffer from not wearing the seatbelt. It won't go back to the public and it won't be tested again. Now they've got that capability, it can be used for other things.
And this is, I guess, what's scary and why it's always good to check back after a short period of time what the thing's being used for.
Chapter 8: How does racial bias affect the accuracy of facial recognition technology?
And by someone independent, is this in line with our own intents and values?
Right now, they're using for this trial a very clearly marked police van, but police haven't ruled out using this in a more covert form in future, including at protests. How does that change the equation compared to what was originally being trialled?
You're spot on. If it's used at protests, for example, imagine we're back in the old days where it was illegal to be homosexual, a criminal offence. Then if there was a protest for gay rights, having a camera there identifying people in real time, you know, obviously means that a database can be built of people. Now, you could argue, well, we could have the camera and not record it in real time.
You know, we could have the camera and analyse this later. But that's a much bigger job once you've got it. You know, you probably know yourself. If you get a book and read it, it's easy. But if you put it in that pile of books and that pile just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it's much harder to search. So giving people real-time capability to update databases means...
You could identify people who are violating the law, even when, perhaps, it's not a law we're totally happy with. And it's a chilling effect, really, on your ability to protest, like we saw in China and Hong Kong.
Coming up, how facial recognition technology is being used elsewhere in Australia and the world.
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Richard, what can you tell us about how this technology is being used by police in other parts of the world? Yeah.
So in the States, they do a lot of facial recognition stuff, and it's being used to identify people that the police are interested in because they've had a long history of doing that. But I do think the big problem in the States is the chilling effect, that you would now be frightened to protest against things you might think are egregious.
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