On camera: a nation of suspects

Surveillance networks may soon scan every face, matching the results against wanted lists. EUGENE BINGHAM reports.

Next time you step off a plane at Auckland International Airport, smile.

You are being watched.

And soon it could be much more than ordinary observation. Security cameras are warping into the 21st century, and the revolution is about to start at the airport.

The Internal Affairs Department wants to link cameras in the arrivals hall with computer technology to scan incoming passengers.

And to pick out terrorists and crooks, the computer will scan every face, even people whose biggest crime might be an extra bottle of duty-free grog.

Facial recognition technology works by picking up unique features and matching them against photos on wanted lists. Privacy guardians were horrified when British police began a pilot scheme two years ago.

But by 2004, it could be here. Officials from the department's passport office have been asking suppliers how much a system would cost to install if the Government says yes.

It is not a giant leap to imagine the technology being hooked up to the thousands of security cameras that have sprouted in towns and cities. Large tracts of the urban landscape are under 24-hour electronic surveillance after a push in the early 1990s to set up networks of cameras for crime prevention.

Police policy documents developed at the time say street cameras were designed to cut crime by random monitoring of problem areas. Today, technical developments mean cameras are not just a deterrent. They are capable of much, much more. Policies from 1995 are being left behind.

It is something the police recognise. Superintendent Neville Matthews is reviewing the policy to take account of advances such as the use of digital images.

Gone are the days when cameras were a passive tool for police at the local station.

Witness the use of cameras to trace the movements of murder victim Marie Jamieson. Detectives were able to view her buying alcohol and walking across a petrol station forecourt.

Lenses have become a standard overhead for business owners. As Mr Matthews says, the cameras have become a part of life.

But at what cost to our privacy?

Nigel Waters, a former deputy federal privacy commissioner in Australia, says it must be remembered that it is not just the bad guys whose movements are watched.

"Cameras record at random - shoppers, alcoholics, lovers and children at play," he wrote in a paper for a Christchurch privacy conference.

While police rules about operation and placement are wide-ranging, Mr Waters fears they do not go far enough. For a start, there are no penalties.

The rules also stipulate that cameras should be placed only where there is a demonstrably high incidence of crime. But apparent public acceptance means it is not just high-crime zones that are under surveillance. Communities want cameras for their peace of mind.

Te Atatu community constable Murray Smith and local business leaders want to set up five cameras that will track every vehicleentering the Te Atatu Peninsula.

Constable Smith, who spent three years on the beat in Britain, where cameras are common in most towns, proposed the idea for Te Atatu without knowing the likely response.

"I put it to the community and they jumped at it. Ten years ago, if you wanted to set up a system like this you would get nothing but opposition."

The $300,000 Te Atatu system will be monitored by a private security firm 24 hours a day, seven days a week so officers can be sent to quell trouble. If a crime is committed, police will be able to scan the digitally stored images to see if it has been caught on camera. They will even be able to check when and how the offenders entered the peninsula.

Constable Smith says there is nothing sinister in this - the system would be used only to fight crime.

It is the old argument that if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about.

The same line has been used by some to justify the extension of powers for spy agencies, such as the the Crimes Amendment Bill which will allow the Security Intelligence Service, Government Communications Security Bureau and police to hack into computers.

Computer security expert Hank Wolfe, of Otago University, prefers to turn the argument around, asking the agencies to justify why they need such intrusive powers.

"Maybe in the Cold War it would be okay, but it's different now ... Who is the enemy? Is Australia going to invade us?"

The bureau and the SIS have admitted to the Herald that they do, from time to time, inadvertently gather information on people who are not the targets of specific operations. Both say the material is destroyed.

For its part, the security bureau emphasises that its role is to spy on foreign communications.

Director Warren Tucker says: "Stringent measures are in place to ensure that our signals intelligence collection is precisely focused on this objective, and that any irrelevant material which is inadvertently collected is promptly destroyed."

The SIS says it also has procedures to avoid spying on innocent people. Director Richard Woods would not elaborate for security reasons, but he did confirm that the SIS destroyed files once they were no longer needed. He would not say how long they were kept.

For people wanting to find what the SIS knows about them, Mr Woods said there was a policy of granting limited access to subjects of security checks, such as civil servants.

"Otherwise, with limited exceptions, the service will generally neither confirm nor deny whether information ... is held."

The man charged with monitoring the intelligence agencies, Justice Laurie Greig, said this policy was for security reasons.

"When you disclose some material - even a denial or an affirmation - it allows people who are interested in the service to start ticking things off."

They could use a process of elimination to determine how the agencies operated.

The retired High Court judge is the first Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, a position created to allay concerns about a lack of oversight of the agencies.

The SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau are exempt from certain provisions of the Privacy Act, but Justice Greig believes both are careful to balance the need for security against the right to individual privacy.

But, says free-trade campaigner and SIS target Aziz Chaudhry,Justice Greig would say that.

"The inspector-general is a toothless tiger," said Mr Chaudhry, who won a case against the SIS after agents broke into his Christchurch house.

He believes the environment in which the agencies operate in New Zealand entitles them to carry out gross invasions of the privacy of people whose political views are at odds with accepted norms.

If cameras are constantly whirring above us and intelligence agencies have the powers to intercept our communications, how far away are we from George Orwell's depiction of life in his book 1984?

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment ... You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and, except in the darkness, every movement was scrutinised.

Herald Online feature: Privacy

Privacy Commissioner (NZ)

Electronic Privacy Information Centre (USA)

ACLU Echelon Watch (USA)

Cyber Rights and Liberties(UK)