Police have missed a critical deadline to delete unlawfully gathered photos of children and young people.
An state media inquiry in 2021 prompted an order for the police to cease casual photography of the public and to delete tens of thousands of pictures.
The sheer volume of unlabelled photos spread across numerous systems has made this task unmanageable. The police admitted that the lack of metadata and the extensive data holdings have rendered a solution unfeasible at this time, according to a report today.
In response, the privacy commissioner has extended the deletion deadline to mid-2025 and added new requirements for the police to establish more controls over accessing and using these photos. “Exploratory work” on these directives is now underway.
The actions are part of over a dozen directives from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in 2022, which included stopping the practice of taking random, casual photos and unlawfully obtained fingerprints.
Image credit: Robert Shunev
Hard to see the line where criminality ends and policing begins these days. They are out photographing people for no obvious reason, (perhaps save a form of passive intimidation) all the time. Especially people attending protests. I’ll wager most of the pics wont be deleted.
There is no expectation of privacy in public just remember this works both ways and should also be used against the police.
You think Five Eyes program is not gathering images and data on individuals in private without a warrant? Let’s focus on the real government crimes and eliminate the Five Eyes program.
Rather convenient of the Police.