Page 3966 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 2011
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the image can be established, if necessary, in court. It is not possible to include personal information about the driver or vehicle owner on images taken by traffic cameras. This is in an important point.
Personal information relating to vehicle owners and drivers is held on the rego.act database system. That system is not linked to the camera system in any way. The two systems do not and cannot communicate with each other. It is, therefore, not possible for information from the rego.act system to be included on images when the images are taken. Personal information cannot be transferred onto the images after they are taken, because once an image has been taken, the digital image file for that image cannot be altered, whether by the Traffic Camera Office or by anybody else.
A draft of this bill was provided to the Office of the Australian Information Commission, which is the office that supports the Australian Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner and the Freedom of Information Commissioner. In relation to matters raised by the OAIC, I undertook to provide further information about the measures that are either already in place or will be put in place to ensure that images and personal information used in the point-to-point camera system will be dealt with appropriately. The government will make a regulation to implement one of the OAIC’s suggestions. The new regulation will give a legislative basis for the requirement to delete unadjudicated images after 30 days.
There are existing provisions in other territory legislation that could be used as a model for a new regulation to require the destruction of images after 30 days. I note that the existing regulation-making power in section 24 of the principal act is amended by the bill to allow for regulations for any other matter relating to average speed detection systems and that this amended power would support the making of the proposed regulation.
On this point, I note that Ms Bresnan has foreshadowed she intends to move an amendment to require the deletion of unadjudicated images as soon as possible. The government is considering Ms Bresnan’s amendment, although it does have some reservations about it, as I have indicated to her previously. These relate primarily to the availability of the information to be accessed by the police by either subpoena or warrant should that be necessary for the purposes of a criminal investigation. Nevertheless, the government is giving further consideration to the issues raised by Ms Bresnan.
The government will also adopt the OAIC’s recommendation that before any more extended use is made of images from the point-to-point system, an assessment is made using the framework developed by the OAIC. This framework is consistent with the existing approach used in the ACT for assessing the human rights impacts of new laws and policies.
It is the case that the AECOM forward design study noted that the technology in point-to-point camera systems has the potential to be used for a wider range of purposes than speed enforcement, including mass surveillance. But I want to make it clear that government has not provided for that use in this bill. The government believes any extension in the use of images from traffic cameras beyond those
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