More than 430k driver licences shared to facial recognition database

As at March 18 this year, Tasmania had uploaded 430,113 of its citizens’ driver’s licence photos to the national facial recognition database.

The state government has uploaded more than 430,000 Tasmanians’ driver’s licence photos to the national facial recognition database, equating to about 80 per cent of the island’s total population.

In October 2017, an intergovernmental agreement was struck at a Council of Australian Governments meeting to upload citizens’ driver’s licence, passport and visa information to various databases managed by the Home Affairs Department.

The Identity Matching Services will allow the sharing and matching of Australians’ personal information between the state, territory and federal governments. It’s been badged as an initiative that will help to combat identity crime, as well as promote more effective law enforcement, national security and road and community safety.

The Tasmanian government began uploading driver’s licence data to the system in December 2018, nine months before the next jurisdiction, Victoria, in August 2019. South Australia followed last December. As at March 18 this year, the Tasmanian government had uploaded 430,113 of its citizens’ driver’s licence photos, while Victoria had uploaded 5.1 million and South Australia 1.3 million.

It’s understood the Victorian Labor government implemented further safeguards to ensure the secure upload of the data as part of the national project, which was why there was a nine-month gap between when Tasmania and Victoria began uploading information.

Independent Nelson MLC Meg Webb said that it was clear that other states “have taken a more cautious approach”.

“The government has failed to openly discuss this with the Tasmanian people,” she said.

“When governments impinge on people’s civil liberties and personal freedom, they have to act with openness and accountability to ensure the confidence and trust of the community.

“In this case, the more we learn about these actions taken by the Tasmanian government, the more questions arise.”

State Growth Minister Michael Ferguson said Tasmanians would “expect” their government to “act quickly and take action to protect their most important identity documents”.

“And this is exactly what we’re doing,” he said.

“This personal information is specifically protected by regulations, which were amended in December 2017 to permit the release of this information for identity-matching services.”

In order to facilitate the transfer of Tasmanians’ driver’s licence photos, the state government amended the Vehicle and Traffic (Driver Licensing and Vehicle Registration) Regulations, which meant legislation was not required to be brought before the parliament and debated.

Now, whenever Tasmanians sign a form to obtain or renew their driver’s licence, they give consent to the government to upload their licence photo to the national facial recognition system.

A Home Affairs spokesperson said the National Driver Licence Facial Recognition Solution didn’t start operating until Tasmania first uploaded images to the system.

Meanwhile, Tasmanian Greens senator Nick McKim believes the state government didn’t obtain informed consent to share people’s driver’s licences.

“It’s pretty clear that hundreds of thousands of Tasmanian licences have been transferred into the database with no consent at all,” he said.

“I lay the fault for this at the feet of the Tasmanian government because it was their data and they had a responsibility to protect it. And now it’s in a major national database that will be like a honeypot for hackers.”

Senator McKim said the state government had displayed “unseemly haste” and “a contempt for Tasmanians who hold driver’s licences” by uploading the data in the way that it did.

The identity-matching services bill, which authorises Home Affairs to create and maintain facilities for the sharing between government agencies of facial images and other personal information, is yet to pass the Federal Parliament.

Last October, the bill was knocked back by the parliament’s intelligence and security committee, chaired by Liberal MHR Andrew Hastie, due to it supposedly needing to incorporate further privacy protections.

Rob Inglis

The Examiner 16 May 2020