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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2483 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The written-off vehicle register will keep a record of the vehicle identification numbers of motor vehicles that have been damaged in an accident and assessed to be not worth repairing. This will prevent the reregistration of stolen vehicles using a vehicle identifier taken from a written-off vehicle, what is called rebirthing of stolen vehicles.

I understand that this aspect of the bill is the ACT's response to an agreement by the Australian Transport Ministerial Council to develop written-off vehicle registers in each jurisdiction as a key element in reducing vehicle theft. This seems like a reasonable initiative, and I don't have a problem with it.

The retention of the digital image of people who obtain a drivers licence or proof-of-age card is more problematic, as it raises significant privacy issues. At present drivers licences and proof-of-age cards contain a photo of the person, but these are just Polaroid photos taken at the time of the issue of the licence or card and are not stored separately.

This has allowed unscrupulous people to obtain licences with their photo on it but the name and details of someone else. This has led to problems of identity fraud, as drivers licences are commonly used as a form of proof of identity for the police in tracking down driving offenders and for bank accounts, passports and Centrelink benefits.

Technology is now available to take those photos as digital images which can then be stored in a computer database alongside other information about the person being issued the drivers licence. The person's signature can also be stored as a digital image. The new rego.act computing system currently being implemented by the Road Transport Authority has this capacity.

Persons seeking to renew or replace their licence will have to be visually matched by counter staff to the digital image already stored in the computer before a new licence can be issued. Given that drivers licences are issued for five-year periods, it will take some time for the full database of images to be completed.

I am concerned about potential misuse of these digital images and the long-term implications of the use of biometric identification technology. The bill addresses the misuse aspect by restricting the use and disclosure of the images to licensing and law enforcement purposes.

The Commonwealth Privacy Act will also apply to the use of these digital images. The Department of Urban Services has prepared a protocol covering the collection, storage, security use and disclosure of photographic images which goes into detail about how the rego.act system will be set up to ensure that the information privacy principles in the Privacy Act will be met.

This bill has sufficiently attempted to meet all the necessary requirements of current laws and principles on the protection of privacy to deserve support. However, I wonder where this is all headed. Digital image technology allows the photographs of ordinary people to be moved around any computer network, including the Internet, and linked to any other databases. Images can be altered or inserted into other images. Images can be analysed to determine unique features.

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