Pirate Party Australia is deeply concerned about the increasing international trend of widescale surveillance, such as the possible implementation of the Trapwire surveillance system in Australia, due to the significant potential for abuse.
Yesterday, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed[1] ties between a government contractor and a company manufacturing sophisticated surveillance equipment that claims to detect “suspicious activity”, which ultimately means activity that marks a person as suspicious without the person actually committing any crime. To increase its efficiency, the system collects information from its multiple installations and combines it, even across borders.
“These systems claim to detect ‘pre-crime’ activities and tag individuals as suspects automatically. Such systems, when deployed in the public space, are an encroachment on the privacy of the users of public spaces,” said David W. Campbell, President of Pirate Party Australia. “They have the effect of suppressing the legitimate activities of law abiding individuals, who become justifiably worried about being mislabelled and prosecuted.”