Adelaide City Council holds special meeting shocking claims its new CCTV system will include facial recognition

Adelaide City Council held a special meeting last night after rampant claims its new CCTV cameras would include facial-recognition technology. Here’s what was decided.

Facial recognition cameras will not be installed within the Adelaide CBD, despite widespread claims to the contrary.

Adelaide City Council has voted unanimously not to buy software that would enable the technology to be used on new CCTV cameras being installed.

A public forum has been organised next week at Adelaide Town Hall by Monash University featuring various individuals opposed to the use of facial recognition, despite the council not owning nor planning to use the technology.

Cr Alexander Hyde and two other councillors, Mary Couros and Arman Abrahimzadeh, called a special meeting on Tuesday following widespread publicity claiming the technology was about to be installed in the city.

There also has been recent controversy over national retailers Bunnings, Kmart and The Good Guys using facial recognition to identify shoplifters.

Cr Hyde said council should not provide any CCTV footage to SA Police if it was proposing to use facial recognition.

Security cameras in Rundle Mall, Adelaide. NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

“When the state takes power, it very rarely gives that power back or acquiesce,” he said. “Without proper checks and balance on how that power would be used would be a poor move on our behalf.”

Cr Hyde said there had been “reporting that the City of Adelaide is introducing facial recognition which is untrue and not the case”.

“To suggest otherwise is misinformation and misrepresentation on what we are doing,” he said.

Cr Anne Moran said the publicity about the council using facial recognition had caused “consternation and fear”.

Cr Moran said for many people facial recognition “is not so much about privacy, it is about safety”.

Migrants from war-torn countries “would just find this scary”, she said.

“As soon you get a totalitarian government or any shift in our government, it is a very dangerous thing to have in your armoury,” she said. “Privacy is just a fluff, a nonsense thing.”

Cr Moran said she had “no problem with wanting to catch the baddies”.

“But if it (facial recognition) is just to catch a few pickpockets and shoplifters in Rundle Mall then it is not necessary,” she said. “The clever baddies will just find a way around it.

“In the future, we might be convinced that the guidelines and safeguards are good that we are happy to take that step (facial recognition).

“It is not just a crime-fighting thing. It is a very, very big step,”

The council’s IT director, Sanjoy Ghosh, said the council had not planned to put facial recognition on the new CCTV system.

Mr Ghosh said it had never been part of the procurement process to replace cameras installed across the city in the mid-1990s following “some incidents in Rundle Mall”.

“They need to be replaced as they are nearing their operational life and we went to open tender,” he said.

“We have not purchased the software to turn on facial-recognition software. That was not included in the tender process.”

Mr Ghosh said none of the cameras being installed across the city “will have that capacity enabled”.

“If SAPOL want any footage we are providing, that can’t use it for that purpose,” he said.

“We own the system. They won’t be able to do it without our assistance. We do not have the software.”