ACT Policing admit to using Auror's crime software without privacy assessment

Auror, a New Zealand surveillance technology startup, allows its users to collect information about potential or suspected offenders and share it with other retailers and police to monitor, track and stop them, as first reported by Crikey.

The Auror system is used across a number of major retailers, including Woolworths, Bunnings and Coles, and has raised concerns among privacy advocates.

ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan told senators on Thursday the territory wing of the Australian Federal Police used the software in relation to "recidivist crime offending".

Greens senator David Shoebridge asked the territory's top cop whether a privacy impact assessment had been conducted in relation to the software.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner earlier in the week confirmed it was "making inquiries" into the software after similarities were drawn to controversial face-matching program, Clearview AI.

Mr Gaughan said ACT Policing hadn't undertaken a privacy assessment because it was using data already available to them across CCTV footage.

"We treat it the same way we treat the ingestion of a large number of other CCTV capabilities across the territory. The answer to the question is no," he said on Thursday.

"We treat the ingestion of CCTV capabilities from the ACT government, including the trams, fixed cameras in the territory, buses, fixed vans, and also the same way we treat the ingestion of CCTV capability and evidence from the general community."

Retailers who use the software can input the details of potential offenders, including hair colour, age, as well as details of the event, drawing from images, CCTV footage, and licence plate information.

Using machine learning, the software then matches profiles and images to help aid retailers and law enforcement in identifying possible offenders.

The software does not use facial recognition technology.

Mr Gaughan defended ACT Policing's use of the software without undertaking privacy assessments, saying it was a "different argument" to the Clearview AI software.

"It is used to identify people who have engaged in criminal activity, it is used as a tool for us to actually prosecute people who engage in recidivist offending," he said.

"Being a small territory that we are, there's a trusting relationship between ourselves and retailers, et cetera, in the community."

The Information Commissioner ordered Clearview to cease collecting data from Australians and destroy all images sourced from the internet and law enforcement agencies in early May after its bid to review a 2021 decision was quashed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

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The US-based tech startup shopped its system to law enforcement agencies around the world as a one-stop shop for biometric identification, after scraping billions of images of people from social media and professional networking sites.

The company remained relatively unknown until a New York Times article revealed in early 2020 it was being trialled by thousands of law enforcement and security agencies, including federal and state police officers in Australia.

The software's algorithm, developed by one of its founders, Hoan Ton-That, could scour the large database of internet images to find matches to faces uploaded by police officers.

A joint year-long investigation between Australian with UK authorities determined in November 2021 the software's use of images taken from the internet without consent was "unreasonably intrusive and unfair".

Clearview AI rejected the privacy commissioner's initial ruling, saying it had "not correctly understood" its business and "missed the mark".