Australia Mulling a Nationwide Vehicle-Tracking System

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that as political support for Australia's version of the national ID card is waning, the powers that be have found a far more effective way to catalog the populace. CrimTrac, an Australian government agency responsible for designing technical solutions to aid policing, is due to hand in a $2.2 million scoping study for the introduction of a nationwide automatic number plate recognition system (ANPR). It seems that as well as ANPR, the system will also collect images of drivers and passengers with high enough resolution for identification purposes. All ANPR data collected would be made available to participating agencies in real time, and retained for five years for future investigations."

Comments

Yes

[oodaloop]

If only we had more data available, we could stop all crime!

Australia Card?

[deniable]

From the summary: "support for Australia's version of the national ID card is waning." Um, what national ID card?

So what exactly is the Hawke government going to do now?

Re:Australia Card?

[a.ameri]

Mod parent up. The summary is (as usual) inflammatory and misinformed. There is no scheme, legislation or proposal in Australia or any of its states for a national ID card.

The closest it got to being implemented was in 1985 during the Hawke government's Australia Card bill. This was at the height of the Hawke Labor government's popularity, and it got the government into so much trouble and lost the government huge capital clout. Hawke dissolved the parliament and held new elections, but still was unable to pass the bill. Later on, a Royal Commission heavily criticised the idea and put the mater to rest. See this for more details.

ANPR is right now, a "scoping study". Australia is nowhere close to perfect, but it has strong civil institutions, and you can make sure that heads will roll and blood will spill if this gets anywhere close to being proposed as a bill. Since then the law has moved in the complete opposite direction. The Privacy Act (1988) specifically mentions that no unique identifier issued by a government agency or corporation can be used by another entity for the purpose of identification. In practice, this means things such as driver's license number, a Tax File Number (equivalent to U.S SSN), or the medicare number can not be used by any corporation or agency other than the one which issued it in the first place, for identification.

Right now, this is a classic example in Australia of the state vs. individual liberties, taught in any university course about identity and privacy. I've met many 'ordinary' (read: not politically active) people across all fields of society, from social workers to lawyers and IT managers, and even the newer generation who is too young to remember the debate first hand (like myself) is definitely acquainted with the subject and its implications. So, unless the poster somehow managed to time travel from 1985, "public support for national card in Australia is wanning" is like saying "public support for Hillary's health care bill is wanning" or "public support for president Nixon is wanning".

The issue did come to surface once again, after former Liberal (which here means Conservative) Prime Minister Howard made some comments about it in 2005 after the London bombings, but even then it was heavily frowned upon and both parties knew better than to include it into their agenda.

Australia is nowhere close to perfect, but it has strong civil institutions. This is a "scoping study". The moment the study is published, if it recommends anything remotely close to implementing CimTrack's ANPR, you can make sure that heads will roll and blood will spill in the electorate.

Re:on-start service.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Help! I don't know where am I, but i see a kangaroo and the toilets are flushing backwords"

For those whose knowledge of Aussie plumbing is limited to that one episode of the Simpsons, Australian toilets do not flush backwards. The design they use does not produce any swirling motion at all.

Re:No ...

[magarity]

No, crime will stop when the second to last person dies.

Re:ANPR already in UK

[ijakings]

Yeh but thats counting all of the private entity Cameras. There seems to be a widespread myth these days that every camera you see everywhere is linked together. So that perhaps a mean with a white beard and an over exuberant use of visa vis can watch us 24/7.

A fraction of the cameras are owned and controlled by the government and even then, from the limited information ive obtained from watching crime programs, getting detailed information accross even county borders isnt easy.

Take off the tinfoil hat please.

Re:I'm all for this system

[jamesh]

I know you were kind of joking, but I think that would be a great test for any new law like this. Something to go in the constitution. Any politician voting to approve any new monitoring law has to make all data collected about them (and their family?) publicly available in as near to real time as possible for the duration of their term of office, and a few years afterward, just to make sure.

If the law gets in, the monitoring is only put in on a trial basis for (say) 6 months, after which the politicians are given the opportunity to change their mind about their vote (eg the law is put to vote again).

If any politician doesn't want to vote for such a law on that basis, then that's probably a pretty good indicator that the law is too intrusive.

Re:ANPR already in UK

[sentientbeing]

Ive spent the last few years working with IT departments at airports and other major networked UK sites providing cabling and telecom services. Ive been to many of the secret rooms and surveilance areas of these places.
Im not trying to disappoint the CCTV-Tinfoilhatters abroard in the US, but nobody sits in a room like Lex Luthor spying on individuals and following them about their business with camera. It is an extremely BORING pastime. The guys running these networks generally spend all their time releasing remote doors, monitoring queue lengths, opening car parking barriers and signing out keys for storerooms.

or reading The Sun.

Re:Welcome to the Global Village

[petes_PoV]

Of course, surveillance *can* be used by a police state, but it can be used against the state as well.

Not if the police state makes it unlawful for anyone but themselves to use surveillance. In the UK, you'll more than likely have your camera taken off you if the police spot you filming them.

Re:on-star service.

[aurispector]

Agreed. The whole idea is incredibly stupid. "CrimTrak"? If they know someone is a criminal, go to his house, his parent's house or his girlfriend's house. 95% of the time he'll be there. For the other 5%, we need panopticon video surveillance of the general population! It's obvious! How ever did we make it to 2008? The criminals should have killed us all by now without this technology!

Please, somebody, somewhere cut me a f*cking break and stop this stupidity.