Electronic Frontiers Australia has joined with Digital Rights Watch and the Australian Privacy Foundation to file an official complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner about the conduct of Bunnings, Kmart, and The Good Guys
The grounds for complaint are as follows:
Lack of valid consent
APP 3.3 provides that APP entities must not collect sensitive information unless:
• they have obtained consent to the collection and the collection is ‘reasonably necessary for their functions or activities, or
• an exception listed in APP 3.4 applies.
The APP Guidelines provide that, for consent to be valid, it may be express or implied, but:
• the individual must be adequately informed before giving consent,
the individual must give consent voluntarily,
the consent must be current and specific, and
the individual must have the capacity to understand and communicate their consent.
In addition, the fact that the technology operates on every person entering a store means that minors, who cannot legally consent, are also having their biometric information collected and used by the retailers
See link to Open Voice: https://www.facebook.com/105441945275112/posts/175172434968729/
Retailers Bunnings stated in response:
“We let customers know about our use of CCTV and facial recognition technology through signage at our store entrances and also in our privacy policy, which is available on our website”.
Providing notice of collection is not the same as obtaining consent. The circumstances of the collection of biometric information is covert.
Full Details: https://www.efa.org.au/2022/06/22/efa-complains-to-oaic-about-retailers-use-of-facial-surveillance/
We refer to our previous posts on the proposed introduction of Facial Recognition Technology in Ireland and submissions people can adapt to voice their strong objection to this dystopian mass surveillance which poses significant risks to individual and societal privacy rights and to freedom of expression, assembly and movement(https://www.facebook.com/107967184868855/posts/309256261406612/)
See also link to Petition raised by Jana Lunden https://www.change.org/p/stop-facial-recognition-surveillance
The State are attempting to introduce this Chinese-style Facial Recognition Technology by pulling on the emotional heartstrings of the people in Ireland under the guise that it will prevent murders, child killers and protect innocent people. Minister McEntee has failed to provide any hard facts on this unfounded claim and has ignored the evidence of high levels of inaccuracies found in the study conducted on the London Metropolitan Police’s pilot project. The London Metropolitan Police introduced Facial Recognition Technology in 2020 and there is currently a campaign by civil liberty groups such as Big Brother Watch UK and Liberty to STOP this Surveillance because of the risks to people’s civil and human rights.
The thinking people of Ireland know that if Facial Recognition Technology is introduced under the Garda Síochána Recording Devises Bill for ‘limited circumstances’ it is only a matter of time before it is used as a tool of mass surveillance by successive authoritarian Governments.
