Police boss cops flak over surveillance

A column by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster seeking to start a national conversation about surveillance is being panned as a disingenuous attempt to deflect criticism.

Coster wrote in the NZ Herald complaining the police were copping it for underdoing and overdoing intelligence collection.

On one side, they were panned for only learning of threats to mosques posted to a website used by extremists and white supremacists after a member of the public told them.

And on the other, there are reports of police approaching innocent young Ma¯ori, photographing them, collecting their personal details and sending it to a national database.

Coster writes these both speak to the question about what tradeoffs to privacy the community is prepared to make in the interests of safety.

Criminologist Emilie Ra¯kete said this was a ridiculous, false comparison.

“Brown children waiting outside the dairy without their parents are not the same thing as Nazis.

“There is a reasonable expectation of privacy — a reasonable expectation from parents that their children won’t be approached and photographed by strangers — that people posting about organising killings on the internet do not have.”

Ra¯kete said Coster was trying to deflect criticism of the police, including accusations of racial profiling when taking photos of young people — something the police deny.

Victoria University of Wellington criminologist Trevor Bradley said while there was merit in a public discussion about privacy, the police needed to come clean about what they are doing.

He said the police’s widening use of facial recognition technology and revelations about young people being photographed — currently the subject of three reviews — only came to light because of the media.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority and Privacy Commissioner’s report into photographing is expected to be finished in September.