Concerns over ‘vehicle-tracking system’ in Auckland as cameras scan 500,000 number plates daily

If you’re an Auckland driver, chances are your vehicle has been snapped by a traffic camera or a residents’ parking enforcement car. It’s now in a database which can be searched by police who meet the criteria. The huge pool of personal information is just one stream feeding into a river of licence plate details captured by a piecemeal network of cameras. David Fisher reports.

New data show motorists in Auckland have their number plates scanned about 500,000 times a day by roadside cameras and a fleet of cars checking residents-only parking areas.

Over the course of seven days from the end of February and into March, there were 3,770,649 scans of number plates carried out and logged in Auckland Transport’s (AT) system.

The information is primarily used for traffic management and enforcement of transit lanes but is also available to police as part of the flow of number plate data to which it has had access in recent years.

The rate of collection has brought concern from civil liberties and motoring experts who say mission creep is inevitable with the increasing spread of cameras that can read number plates.

“It means you have a de facto vehicle-tracking system in Auckland,” said Thomas Beagle, chairman of the Council for Civil Liberties. “I don’t think we signed up for a vehicle-tracking system.”

It’s the latest concern over automated number plate harvesting tools and follows defence lawyers raising issues with the lack of transparency over how the systems are regulated and used.

The AT information adds to number plate data funnelled to police through two private companies with contracts covering cameras across business associations, councils, service stations, shopping malls and supermarkets.

Unlike other countries, our police never invested in a network of cameras but have instead tapped into those that have developed organically over the years to improve community safety and combat retail crime.

It is a network set to expand further with NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi eager to increase traffic camera numbers from 150 to 800 - it has also recently confirmed it is in discussions with police about what data the force might want.

The details - how many get scanned

An AT spokesman said its parking enforcement team had 20 cars with licence-plate-recognition technology used for parking offences, including monitoring residential parking zones.

Those scans were supplemented by others captured on AT’s CCTV networks, which it says keep plate information to help improve its network or for the prosecution of motorists who use transit lanes unlawfully.

He said the number of scans reflected each number plate captured by each camera, meaning some motorists would have been captured by multiple cameras. For context, public records show there are about 110,000 cars registered in the Auckland area each year, of a total 1.1 million vehicles.

The figures provided by AT cover February 27 through to March 5. The greatest number of plates scanned was on Thursday with 642,311. The quietest days were Sunday (March 3) with 393,167 and the following Tuesday (March 5) with 381,146.

The system captured 3,770,649 number plates over the week from Tuesday (February 27) to the following Monday (March 4).

The Auckland Transport Operation Centre plays a role in scanning the number plates of thousands of vehicles every day. Photo / Jed Bradley

The AT spokesman said there had been no “privacy impact assessment (PIA)” carried out on its gathering of number plate data.

Instead, he said the recently-completed police PIA incorporated AT.

“The only scenario where number plates captured by AT’s licence plate recognition system are made available to other organisations or agencies is when they are provided to NZ Police in relation to an active police investigation.

“These requests follow AT’s process for this, which requires appropriate management approvals.”

The approval process, provided by AT to the Herald, required police to provide the name of who was seeking the information, the police case or incident number, the “purpose of the request”, a date range and the licence plate.

Once that information was provided, a council manager could then approve the release of the information to police. The process showed “positive hits” of the number plate would be provided to police.

Valuable investigation tool - police

Police told the Herald: “[Automatic number plate recognition] data is a valuable investigative tool for police in order to hold offenders to account and keep our communities safe. However, we are committed to getting the balance right by using technology safely and responsibly.”

Police began exploring ANPR technology around 2017, at which time a PIA carried out for the Counties Manukau District was circulated at headquarters. The document urged police to be open with the public to build confidence and to carry out regular audits on use of the system to enhance transparency.

The development of the successful Kiwi start-up companies Auror and Safer Cities provided platforms through which police could access the automatically harvested and stored number plate data.

In September 2022 it emerged police had falsely entered vehicles into its system as “stolen” allowing them to be tracked in real-time and triggering an alert if spotted by any cameras.

Improper use of number plate tracking systems emerged during the hunt for three women believed at the time to have breached the Northland border crossing during lockdown. It later emerged the women had done nothing wrong. Photo / Michael Cunningham

In the inquiry that followed, it emerged police had never carried out an audit on its use of the systems. When an audit was carried out, it was found a handful of police officers had used the system improperly. It also emerged police use had gone from hundreds of searches when first introduced to hundreds of thousands of searches.

A full PIA for police was not completed until late last year.

During the Herald’s ongoing investigation into ANPR systems, police refused to provide the PIA carried out by Auror into its own system. After the initial refusal, a complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman led to a heavily-redacted version being released over which the Herald complained again.

The entire report was released by police late last month in which Auror’s privacy specialists said “a reasonable person would not expect privacy” when using car parks at shops or service stations.

Chief Ombudsman weighs in

This week Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier released his communications with police in which it was told it had to disclose the report.

Boshier said: “This is an issue of such public significance and the level of disquiet and debate is such that only a full release of Auror’s PIA will satisfy the public interests of transparency and accountability.”

Auror had said the PIA contained commercially sensitive information which Boshier disputed and he ruled that even if it had, the public interest outweighed the company’s interest.

At one stage, Auror told police if a precedent was set that the Ombudsman’s office would require “commercially sensitive information provided as part of our commercial partnership to be regularly released” then “we would be unwilling to provide it in the future”.

Boshier said this was doubtful because “there is a clear financial incentive for Auror to continue doing business with the police”.

Auror was asked by the Herald if it would stop supplying information to police. A spokeswoman for the company said an answer would not be provided.

A spokeswoman for police said the PIA document had been released after a change in “Auror’s stance on commercial confidentiality” and a change in the prospect of future information being withheld.

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier ordered police to fully disclose a report on automatic number plate recognition. Photo / Paul Taylor

Beagle, chairman of the Council for Civil Liberties, reviewed the Auror PIA and what had been previously withheld and said the redactions were “often bizarre” with no apparent reason information could not be made public.

He said some of the redactions “are clearly made to keep people in the dark about the scope of the proposal” and would be hard to justify on the grounds given.

“The document is a fascinating example of how officials can misuse the withholding powers in the Official Information Act to try to hide information for their own reasons.”

Beagle said it was unlikely the public would have given its approval to a “vehicle-tracking system” if police had set out to build it from scratch.

He said the scale and scope of the system was such that the public would have baulked at it but it had been allowed to grow in a piecemeal way without a strict framework of controls.

Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of the car review website Dog & Lemon, said number plate recognition was “gradually creating a society where every vehicle trip can be watched”.

“What began as a simple way of issuing parking tickets has grown into a nationwide surveillance system. This system can spy on you when you go shopping or when you drive to a restaurant for dinner. Most motorists are completely unaware that their movements may be monitored in this way.”

Matthew-Wilson said surveillance would get worse and predicted “compulsory transmitters in your car that can track your every movement and can switch your car off anytime, anywhere, without you being able to do anything about it”.

“This is not science fiction; this is here-and-now technology that is already in use by finance companies who loan money on cars.”

Lawyer Genevive Vear of the Public Defence Service, who has worked on a case involving a challenge to the police use of ANPR evidence, told the Herald last week the use of such technology by law enforcement foreshadowed other advances such as facial recognition and it was important to get “guard rails” in place now.

It recently emerged the actual number of cameras is unknown by police and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Of the two private companies, Auror also said it does not know how many cameras it has while Safer Cities has not responded to questions.

David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.