Let’s face it

THE Sunday Herald Sun did everyone a great service at the weekend when it raised the spectre of facial recognition linked to public transport myki cards.

I don’t care that a very awkward-looking Labor minister Martin Foley gave a barely convincing denial of the story on Channel 7 news.

“We’ve got no plans to follow the NSW apparent investigation of facial recognition technology,” he said carefully.

He didn’t say it wouldn’t happen tomorrow. He just didn’t know of any plans. The follow-up question that would have stumped the Minister for Other Stuff But Not Exactly Transport didn’t come.

I’m talking about the fact the Victorian Government is already preparing to use facial recognition in transport.

My source for all this information, before anyone gets too excited, is the government’s own websites, including those of the Federal Government. Let’s dive in. The Victorian Government is a pioneer of uploading your photos to an Australian Government outfit called IDMatch.

It announces this with a big headline that says: “The National Driver Licence Facial Recognition System”.

And then it says: “The Victorian Government has joined the Commonwealth Government’s National Driver Licence Facial Recognition Solution”. Well, well, well. So, when the Minister says Victoria has no plans to investigate facial recognition … well, we don’t need to, do we?

Why would we need to investigate facial recognition when we’re already uploading your photographs into one?

You’ll be pleased to know the government did this WITH your consent, as it points out cutely.

“Consent to share personal data has already been provided by Victorian driver's licence applicants and holders at the time of application and renewal, by agreeing to the VicRoads Privacy Statement and Collection Notice,” it says. “It’s not possible to ‘opt-out’.” Of course not. This trick has been lifted straight from the Google and Facebook user manual of data collection with less than explicit consent.

But, hey, your data is safe because it is in a secure place handled by the Department of Home Affairs and “assessed as secure by the Victorian Government Chief Information Security Officer”. Right. So, this is the point where we ask whether our photos are more secure than our patient records at Barwon Health, which was hacked with a ransomware attack last month.

A week later, IT experts are still restoring access in a process that could take weeks.

Did the hackers get any data? Will we ever know for sure?

Across at IDMatch, the Victorian Government is something of a poster child, “one of the first two states to provide their driver's licence data … with others to follow in a phased roll-out over the next two years.” Ripper. Under the bonnet at IDMatch is an engine called the Face Identification Service, which will be used to match documents to combat identity theft and fraud.

As a victim of identity theft myself, where someone grabbed $500 of groceries on my credit card details in Bondi, I do appreciate the need to secure our transactions.

And, for the moment, I don’t believe these systems will be used for mass surveillance by our governments.

Well, at least there are no plans to do so, according to our politicians.

Two things worry me the most: BUREAUCRATIC bungling and poor judgment when deciding who should get your data (because it’s yours); and DATA security.

It worries me that approved government agencies will get access to a treasure trove of personal information.

It worries me that these selection processes are bureaucratic.

It worries me that IDMatch says that “in future, some local government and private sector organisations will be able use the FVS (Facial Recognition Service), but only with your consent”.

We’ve seen how the Victorian Government handles your consent.

As for data security, that will unravel as soon as the data is shared with local government and private enterprise.

And as for surveillance, if our faces are hacked (which they will be), then our enemies will know more about us than our own governments. Peter Judd is newsroom operations manager for News Corp and a former editor of the Geelong Advertiser.