Canberra: the surveillance capital

Canberra now bristles with the one of the world's most sophisticated systems for monitoring people.

There's recently been a big scaling up of the ability of government agencies and companies to track people using cameras to analyse faces.

Among the recent developments:

Defenders of ever present surveillance say cameras keep people safe. Police and immigration officials at airports use facial recognition technology to weed out undesirable immigrants or criminals.

But critics say that the balance between security and privacy has now tipped too far the wrong way.

The most powerful tool is facial recognition technology where a computer identifies people by analysing the unique shape of each face (the configuration of nose, eyes, mouth, ears, hairline etc - what's called the biometric information).

The AFP use it, with an estimated 15,000 people's facial characteristics on record.

Westfield centres don't use facial recognition in its purest sense. It says it doesn't identify shoppers by putting a name to the faces its cameras scan. It says it doesn't store the images.

A statement to The Canberra Times said, "As part of our commitment to upholding the highest standards of privacy and security, we conduct regular privacy impact assessments and our audience measurement approach complies with relevant privacy legislation."

But it does track shoppers in Woden and Belconnen.

Westfield's technology was developed by a French company, Quividi. Tiny, barely noticeable cameras on the top of advertising panels analyse shoppers' faces and categorise them by age (to within five years), sex, whether they wear glasses or a beard. The French developer's technology can even grade a shopper's mood on a scale of one to five.

According to a trade magazine, Westfield worked with Optus when the Samsung Galaxy S10 phone was launched this year.

If the cameras thought the nearby shopper was part of a family, the targeted Optus slogan became about "data the whole family can share". If the shopper was a younger man, the slogan was about Premier League soccer.

The aim was to "drive foot traffic" to the Optus store at the Westfield centres.

Westfield also tracks shoppers who have signed up for its WiFi. How a customer moves through the centre - which shops he or she goes to - is useful to work out their buying habits.

The material available to trackers is rising. Canberra's new light rail line system has led to a big increase in the ability of the police to keep watch on citizens.

The 442 new cameras feed live video to the tram system's control room - but it's also accessible by the Australian Federal Police.

A campaigning group described the installation of cameras on trams and at stations as excessive.

"I can't see that those 400 cameras make anyone safer," said Canberra businessman Dr Roger Clarke, the secretary of the Australian Privacy Foundation.

"There are problems with the surveillance path we are on," said Fergus Hanson of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "We're blindly adopting the technology but not thinking through or debating the consequences for our society and democracy."

The tram camera system is an expansion on what was already a wide-ranging network of surveillance.

On the latest figures, the ACT government has more than 2,500 cameras in public areas.

There were 72 meant to prevent crime in places where people gather. It listed the sites: "Civic (28 cameras), Manuka, (6) and Kingston (5). Cameras are also located at mass gathering sites including Canberra Stadium (12), the Jolimont Bus Terminus (11), Manuka Oval (4) and Exhibition Park in Canberra (6)".

On top of that, there are 2,500 ACT government cameras in public places like libraries, waste facilities, cemeteries and bus stops. Most of them were in the transport system.

But the addition of the 442 light-rail cameras marks a jump in technology because it's a live-feed and so a massive amount of data. The all-seeing eyes take monitoring into a whole new realm because of the sophistication of the system.

When you drop your burger wrapper, the picture goes straight to the Operations Control Centre of the Canberra Metro on the first floor of its headquarters at the depot on Sandford Street in Mitchell.

The ACT government says the cameras are not there to invade privacy but to keep people safe.

A statement said, "ACT Government CCTV systems are operated in accordance with the applicable privacy, human rights and record keeping laws of the ACT.

"One of the most important things is our emergency power shut-off button," Operations Manager, Peter O'Brien, said.

Press it and everything stops. "It allows us to shut the power off instantaneously on the entire line, including the depot, so if we do see an incident, it shuts down the entire network."

It's there, for example, if the staff in the control centre see a high vehicle heading for the overhead power lines.

"It gives us the ability to manage any real time incident whether it be antisocial behaviour or a collision with a member of the public or a vehicle," Mr O'Brien said.

"If we do have a medical emergency on board the vehicle and someone has collapsed, it actually allows us to monitor the situation and guide our driver on what to do in that circumstance."

With such a noble motive, the political questions about ubiquitous surveillance seem muted.

But an immense and growing amount of information about what we do - who we go around with, for example, or whether we are at work at a particular time - is available to companies and government agencies.

The technology is not perfect. Facial recognition is easier when the subject is standing still in a well-lit airport passport booth than when he or she is in a moving crowd on a dimly lit street.

But it's getting better, driven probably by the desire of governments, including in totalitarian countries, to keep tabs on citizens.

In Australia, the federal government is currently considering a national data base of faces and their bio-metric characteristics as captured from driving licences and passports.

Parliament's intelligence and security committee decided its plans intruded too far into citizens' rights.

But technology doesn't get uninvented. It may be coming to a store or tram near you.