{"id":281166,"date":"2026-06-24T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T04:15:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T08:15:36","slug":"wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"WA police face backlash over live facial recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/securitybrief.com.au\/story\/wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition\">WA police face backlash over live facial recognition<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/securitybrief.com.au\/story\/wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition\">https:\/\/securitybrief.com.au\/story\/wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-24 22:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"securitybrief.com.au\">securitybrief.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Electronic Frontiers Australia has criticised the Western Australia Police Force&#8217;s use of live facial recognition in public spaces, describing it as an Australian first.<\/p>\n<p>The technology is being used from a marked police van outside major events and in crowded areas, scanning the faces of people walking past in real time. The deployment has raised concerns among privacy and digital rights advocates about consent, oversight and the handling of biometric data.<\/p>\n<p>Biometric information in Western Australia is covered by separate privacy frameworks for the private and public sectors. The private sector is regulated by the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988, while the state public sector falls under the Privacy and Responsible Information Sharing Act 2024, with its main Information Privacy Principles due to begin shortly.<\/p>\n<p>Electronic Frontiers Australia said biometric data and templates are classed as sensitive information under both regimes. That status, it argued, requires strict consent for collection, privacy impact assessments for high-impact uses, and limits on automated decision-making.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key objections<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The organisation is asking whether WA Police consulted the WA Information Commissioner before deploying the system, how express consent is being collected from members of the public, and whether a mandatory Privacy Impact Assessment has been completed and published. It is also questioning whether police have shown that scanning faces in public is necessary and proportionate, and whether a human rights impact assessment has been carried out.<\/p>\n<p>It also raised the timing of the rollout in relation to the state privacy rules, asking whether police are relying on the fact that the WA Information Privacy Principles have not yet taken effect.<\/p>\n<p>At the centre of the dispute is whether people in public can be subjected to real-time biometric scanning without clear notice or consent. The issue has become more contested as police and government agencies test automated&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/securitybrief.com.au\/story\/wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WA police face backlash over live facial recognition https:\/\/securitybrief.com.au\/story\/wa-police-face-backlash-over-live-facial-recognition Publish Date: 2026-06-24 22:00:00 Source Domain:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":281167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/securitybrief.com.au\/uploads\/story\/2026\/06\/25\/compatible_serious-police-officer-street-checkpoint-face-scan-overlay-western-australia-digital-illustration.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281168,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281166\/revisions\/281168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}