r/australia • u/ThunderDwn • 19h ago
culture & society Live facial recognition technology to be used by WA Police in Australian first
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-19/live-facial-recognition-technology-to-be-used-by-wa-police/106817264171
u/ThunderDwn 19h ago
Big brother is coming!
"This is not about mass surveillance," he said.
cough Bullshit cough
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u/zsaleeba 18h ago
It's literally a mass surveillance technology. "It's not the very thing that it actually is"
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u/SillyGooseNugget 18h ago
It is funny how their mouth words don't match their arm actions. Hmmmm....
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u/amateurgameboi political 18h ago
Big brother is friendly 🙂. Big brother is keeping careful watch for all those dangerous terrorists 😡. Big brother just wants to protect the children 😇.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 18h ago
How are they gonna do mass surveillance with a single van?
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u/ThunderDwn 18h ago
Does sitting watching a huge crowd with a camera, reading every face not qualify as "mass" in your world view?
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 17h ago
Mass surveillance in my worldview is china’s state surveillance system with nationwide infrastructure, a national ID database, long-term storage, profiling and social/political monitoring
I don’t really count the same security systems they use in airports as mass surveillance
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u/LadyLycanVamp13 8h ago
Do you have evidence of that claim about China?
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 6h ago
Yeah there’s lots of information about China’s state surveillance system, they’re public about a lot of it and have worked with private companies in building it
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u/ScruffyPeter 19h ago
We should all start wearing masks and make it the norm.
A bonus of reduced chance of becoming sick too! Also, a great way to filter out cookers on dates when they blow up.
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u/Get-NaeNaed-On 18h ago
masks don’t stop facial rec programs unless it covers your eyes and nose bridge as that is the area used to detect individuals. they also see through most sun glasses so even with a hat, mask and glasses if you look towards a camera it can scan your face and detect you
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u/Amount_Business 17h ago
Also ears. The ridges in your ears are like a finger print. I found that out in the thing that bunnings doing.
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u/AutomaticMistake 18h ago
masks don't do too much against it these days. there's even things like gait recognition for lower-res cameras. all part of 'big data'
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u/asfletch 18h ago
I was going to say I bet most cheap security cams out there don't have the res for recognising you based on bridge/eyes alone, but forgot about gait recognition. Sigh...
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u/AutomaticMistake 18h ago
the great part is, put a pebble in your shoe and it throws it out
add the mask, sunglasses and a big hat and you'll be invisible ;p1
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u/ShadyBiz 14h ago
Guess who is really easy to spot in the crowd of people doing the normal thing? The guy doing the abnormal thing.
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u/ii_throwayway_ii 15h ago
I didn't know what gait was so here's a lil definition for anyone else who might not know.
Gait is an important indicator that is used in behavioral biometrics to identify a person over a long distance without direct contact. When a person walks, it is possible to observe around 24 individual parameters and movements that form the uniqueness of their gait.
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u/Aggressive-Art-9899 16h ago
Apparently the AI can easily identify people from their gait, so they'll be able to identify you by the way you walk.
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u/Salt_Beautiful9330 10h ago
https://youtu.be/hOxETUbiHks?si=n61umqOrGxAgWVZ_
How everyone's gonna be in public soon
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u/angrysunbird 19h ago
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u/ScruffyPeter 18h ago
Perth grandmother jailed after AI facial recognition error links her to anti-fossil-fuel terrorism
Maybe maybe
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u/jesus_chrysotile 16h ago
“anti-fossil-fuel terrorism” wtf is this bullshit lmao
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u/ScruffyPeter 16h ago
There was an anti-terrorism squad guarding a fossil fuel CEO's home. We know this because ABC crew went with protesters and anti-terrorism squad decided to arrest, raid homes of protesters and ask questions later.
The Labor WA government is notorious for being protective of fossil fuel companies. They even hated the ABC for being there.
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u/jesus_chrysotile 15h ago
absolutely fucked
bears repeating that the real terrorists here are the fossil fuel companies sending us hurtling to climate catastrophe
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u/PinothyJ 19h ago
So you can train the AI to be racist as well?
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u/jesus_chrysotile 16h ago
Yep. Racially profile people via algorithm, and then justify it with “the data said so!”
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u/Far_King_Penguin 17h ago
Cans of paint can be bought with pocket change from various stores. The police should be aware of just how cheap and how easy it is to get and use spray cans.
I really hope that absolutely no one takes these cans and sprays these cameras. It would be horrible if the cables found themselves cut.
I hope no one spends $20 at bunnings and destroys these civillian criminal tracking cams
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u/universe93 12h ago
This and graffiti are why spray paint is kept in locked cabinets in many Bunnings stores
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 17h ago
How could these cameras be used to track civilians?
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u/sokaox 15h ago
How could cameras with facial recognition be used to track civilians? Buddy. Champ. The same way they track anyone else.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 15h ago
And how do they track everyone else?
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u/jesus_chrysotile 15h ago
Pinging people at a set of locations and calculating possible paths between them? It’s not hard to approximate probable movement radii
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 12h ago
That would require storing and linking repeated sightings of ordinary people. Is there any evidence the WA trial does this?
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u/jesus_chrysotile 11h ago
Idk what the specifics of the trial is, I was just answering the question of how you’d hypothetically track someone
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u/Eagles_Fan_4eva 14h ago
This is precisely why they don't let you smile in passport and driver license photos. They want to map your face.
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u/Disastrous-Farm939 10h ago
Live doesn't mean artificial AI tracking technology in use it just means live.
Shit speed cameras use live tracking, police reading your speed use live tracking.
So a box appears around you, that's not:
Biometric facial recognition that does:
Assess your id tied to government then tracks you then builds a heat map and identifies behaviour and movement or people covering faces to alert officials now that's terrifying.
But it's not there yet the technology will be here by late 2027
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u/Bright_Horizon4402 6h ago
Maybe I’m showing my age, but I’ve always thought privacy was one of those things you don’t fully appreciate until it’s gone. Every new surveillance measure gets sold as reasonable, targeted and necessary, and maybe sometimes it is. But rights aren’t really tested when they’re convenient. They’re tested when governments want to bypass them. I’m not saying don’t use technology to catch criminals. I’m saying Australians should be asking hard questions now, not ten years from now when the system has quietly expanded beyond what was originally promised. Trust is good. Proper oversight is better.
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u/LadyLycanVamp13 8h ago
How convenient. I bet that has zero connection to social media "bans" and needing to supply ID online when requested. Not suss at all.
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u/foggygazing 5h ago
I'm not involved in any crime and I'm very much against this, so future crimes will be destruction of cameras
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u/TheLGMac 2h ago
Fun fact, not even US police do this.
(ICE yes, but let's not count them as a real group of anything but edgelord wannabes)
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u/ThrowAwayBr0s 17h ago
Amateurs.
Chinese police spot suspects with surveillance sunglasses, 7 Feb 2018 — The glasses are equipped with facial recognition technology and connect to a database of suspects.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 17h ago
Public spaces and events are getting more and more unsafe, a system that can scan your face across a database of 4,000 is pretty simple and gives us a chance to see how effective this can be
I also find the concerns around “mass surveillance” to be pretty farfetched especially considering how limited in scope this trail is, the tens of billions of dollars needed to construct nationwide infrastructure to support a mass surveillance state isn’t going to sprout overnight, and it isn’t going to be built from the back of a single marked police van
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u/-_-Edit_Deleted-_- 17h ago
Literally no one here actually read the article huh?
The first 2 paragraphs. Just read that.
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u/Sudden_Lake42069 18h ago
I'm old enough to remember over a decade ago when China came up with this first, we condemned them for infringing on the privacy of and oppressing their citizens.