Australia’s leading privacy and civil liberties organisations condemn the decision by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to provide all images from state and territory driver’s licence databases to the federal National Facial Biometric Matching Capability.
Today, Access Now recognized Australian Attorney General George Brandis as a Villain among the annual Heroes and Villains Award recipients for his comments in opposition to strong digital security tools like encryption. As a leading official representing Australia in the notorious “Five Eyes” partnership, Attorney General Brandis has pushed publicly for requirements for companies to implement measures to allow law enforcement to bypass encryption protections for exceptional access to digital content. This type of access has been repeatedly demonstrated to undermine digital security globally, including and especially for the users in marginalized communities.
Digital Rights Watch has expressed deep concerns over proposed plans that would require drivers license photographs to be included in a national facial recognition database.
This report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee examines Australia’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Today, 18 September 2017, a global coalition of civil society organisations, led by European Digital Rights (EDRi) and including Digital Rights Watch, submitted to the Council of Europe its comments on how protect human rights when developing new rules on cross-border access to electronic evidence (“e-evidence”). The Council of Europe is currently preparing an additional protocol to the Cybercrime Convention.
The Australian Government must ensure transparency of its intelligence sharing with other countries in order to safeguard Australian citizens’ private information, a coalition of privacy and human rights organisations said at the launch of a new campaign.