Govt to spend $18.5m on face matching system
The Coalition Government has revealed the size of the budget for the planned national biometric face matching system, due to go live next year.
The government will spend $18.5 million on the National Facial Biometric Matching Capability system as part of a previously announced $1.3 billion counter-terrorism investment.
Law enforcement, intelligence and other government agencies will be able to use the system to share and match photographs with identity documents, criminal databases and photographs from numerous other government records.
In a media release to formally announce the project, Minister for Justice Michael Keenan said the initiative does not involve granting new powers to the Commonwealth and simply provides a mechanism to share information.
He asserted that the capability is being established with strong privacy safeguards and that agencies using the system will need legislative authority to collect and use facial images. The system will operate as a platform to exchange images but will not be a centralised biometric database.
But the government has come under fire for not adequately consulting with the public on the anticipated privacy impact of extending biometrics collection capabilities. The government also has a poor track record in conducting privacy impact assessments on national security legislation.
At a Senate Estimates hearing last month, the Attorney-General’s department stated that the system is due to be operational in mid-2016.
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