Facial recognition data may become purchasable for private companies in Australia

The Australian government is considering making facial recognition data available for private companies.

By paying a fee they are supposed to get access to data originally collected for the sake of national security.

However, the companies are to be restricted to cases where the person has given her/his consent.

In an interview with The Guardian, Monique Mann, a director of the Australian Privacy Foundation and a lecturer at the faculty of law at the Queensland University of Technology, says that requiring companies to ask for consent may not be enough to protect consumers’ rights or mitigate the risks involved with biometric data, and would encourage firms to store more data.

As also reported by The Guardian, the government struck a deal with states and territories over the controversial national facial recognition database last month. It is said, that according to the documents, which predate the agreement, at that time 50% of the population was already included in the database.

With the help of state and territory governments, the federal Attorney General’s Department planned to expand that number to cover 85% of Australians.