Australian Identity-Matching Services Bill
Jake Goldenfein and Monique Mann, 'Australian Identity-Matching Services Bill' in AI Now, Regulating Biometrics: Global Approaches and Urgent Questions, September 2020
8 Pages Posted: 24 Oct 2020
Date Written: September 5, 2020
Abstract
Despite an absence of enforceable protections, human rights arguments contesting government use of facial recognition in Australia have mirrored those in liberal democracies around the world. In 2019, a parliamentary oversight committee required that laws implementing a national facial recognition system be redrafted so it is “built around privacy, transparency and subject to robust safeguards”. These adjustments however, are unlikely to affect the broader shape of the system to be implemented. A closer look at the legislative exercise and the mechanics of the regime exposes more about the political ambitions behind its development than simply a desire to implement a biometric identity matching. In this report we describe the process of building the Australian biometric identification scheme, and suggest that the facial recognition identity matching service is only part of a broader inter-governmental rearrangement intended to concentrate civil and criminal data within the nascent federal Department of Home Affairs.
Keywords: Biometrics, Facial Recognition, Regulation, Identity Data, Data Governance
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