Smile, Victorian police want your photo

Dale Mills

Victorian police are hoping to store the photographs and details of some 6 million people on a new database, according to the June 19 Herald-Sun.

The new biometric technology means that a photograph of your face can be used to measure facial features and create a unique numeric identifying code for every face. This can be matched against a central database, producing a positive match within five seconds. Police officers in a surveillance vehicle can simultaneously film someone and match their photo.

The new database can be used with "invisible light" technology. This would allow for police on one side of a cricket ground to scan faces on the other side, even in bad lighting, and produce a photograph clear enough to find a match in the database.

Although the new system is in its early stages, VicRoads already holds 5.5 million images, including multiple photos of each driver as they age and renew their licence. There are no details of any proposed civil liberties safeguards.

From Green Left Weekly, June 28, 2006.

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From GLW issue 673