Australia is considering giving companies access to facial recognition database

The Australian government is consulting with telecom companies about paid access to a facial recognition database designed for security purposes. Financial institutions would also be interested in access.

Australia’s Department of Justice is in talks with the private sector about access to the Facial Verification Service in 2018, according to documents released through invocation of the country’s Freedom of Information law. The Australian edition of The Guardian writes about it.

According to the ministry, access to the data would only be given after permission from the citizen concerned. The Facial Verification Service is a verification service that can match a photo with government data such as a passport photo for the purpose of establishing a person’s identity.

The service is part of the National Facial Biometric Matching Capability, which was created for the judiciary and investigative authorities to be able to identify suspects and victims and protect citizens against identity theft. The goal is for 85 percent of Australian residents to be included in the database.

Privacy experts in the country point to the risk that citizens are unable to sufficiently consider whether companies are allowed to access their data and feel almost obliged to give permission for, for example, opening an account. Moreover, in this way companies would be stimulated to create a database themselves for the match with the government service. That would create new privacy risks because citizens do not know how that database is secured and with whom all that data is shared.