Fake stolen cars - the warning police failed to heed over computer-driven number plate recognition systems

Police and military personnel at the 2021 border between Auckland and Northland. Photo / Dean Purcell

Police commanders were told years ago to build public confidence in technology that automatically scans number plates by developing accountable and transparent systems - and then couldn’t produce basic information when asked to show the system wasn’t being abused.

Documents released through the Official Information Act provide an insight into the inability of police to provide information sought by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner around how the powerful surveillance tool is used.

The questions were raised after the Herald revealed police had manufactured false stolen car reports to track vehicles suspected of breaking the 11-day Northland lockdown in 2022.

The revelation prompted police to carry out an audit of how officers use the privately-owned CCTV cameras provided by the Auror and SaferCities networks that span petrol stations, shopping malls, supermarkets and other large chains of retailers.

The audit was meant to be completed by mid-February and released publicly but Police National Headquarters said it has been delayed until March.

The risks associated with the ability of technology to track people were highlighted in the only Privacy Impact Assessment ever carried out by police into automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems.

The internal briefing document was done in 2017 written by the police’s former Chief Privacy Officer Mike Flahive and described the number plate technology as a “forerunner to … facial recognition”.

The report - primarily done for Counties Manukau’s ANPR project - was provided to members of the police executive team, including the chief information officer and chief security officer.

Police are carrying out an audit into how it uses automatic number plate recognition technology. Photo / RNZ

Flahive’s report came with a warning - police bosses were told that “without a strong corporate strategy”, the collection of plate data “could be characterised as ‘mass surveillance’ or ‘big brother’ behaviour”.

“Careful thought and assurance needs be given to the introduction of how the (automatic number plate recognition) project is managed, deployed and operated.”

The 2017 assessment said clarity “around the rules and limits on the use of it are crucial to the integrity of the (ANPR) project”.

With the Counties Manukau ANPR “project potentially becoming a national application, adequate governance and robust assurance as prerequisites for the integrity of the practice”.

“The governance and assurance should be managed from a central executive perspective.”

Recommendations include police coming up with “a ‘defensible’ purpose for collecting” number plate information, the need to carry out research that supported that reason and developing a “robust assurance reporting model”.

Fast-forward five years and police headquarters told the Office of the Privacy Commissioner it couldn’t provide an “audit and assurance programme” because it had yet to be done and “compliance audits” to ensure it was being used appropriately were “a work in progress”.

Police deputy commissioner Jevon McSkimming fielded inquiries from Deputy Privacy Commissioner Liz MacPherson about “audit and monitoring” of ANPR systems, copies of audits of police access and compliance and steps taken to address non-compliant behaviour.

A 2017 report by police warned about the need for an accountable and transparent framework around automatic number plate recognition systems.

McSkimming told the Privacy Commissioner’s office “similar types of questions are being asked internally here”.

Two weeks later McSkimming told MacPherson there was “an expectation such an audit and assurance programme would be put in 2022/23″. He said the intended audit programme had yet to be approved but would be shared once it was.

In response to a request for existing audits, McSkimming said: “This remains a work-in-progress.” He said there were “basic annual statistics” for the previous year but a “comprehensive audit and assurance framework” was still in development.

Work underway included changes to the SaferCities system to make clearer the “reason for tracking” cited by police when using it, McSkimming said.

McSkimming also provided copies of Privacy Impact Assessments carried out by Auror and SaferCities, although sections were redacted to protect commercial information. Police refused the Herald copies of any of the assessment information, saying it was commercially confidential.

MacPherson had told McSkimming, by letter, that the Herald revelation of misuse of the system “together with systemic issues” revealed in the recent inquiry around photographing youth for intelligence purposes, “raised questions in our minds regarding the robustness of police review and audit procedures” around ANPR.

NZ Council of Civil Liberties chairman Thomas Beagle said it would obvious in the police correspondence that it realised “just how badly they’ve failed to implement suitable controls and auditing” for access to the privately-owned networks.

NZ Council For Civil Liberties chair Thomas Beagle says innocent accounts are being caught up in the purges, which are carried out according to secretive criteria. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Beagle said using such systems - like those mounted on police cars - to track stolen vehicles seemed reasonable “but creating a huge historical database of people’s movements is a very different and much scarier thing”.

Victoria University criminologist Trevor Bradley said it was an important issue for a range of reasons “not least because police say this could be tip of the spear for facial recognition technology”.

Bradley said the advice and recommendations from the 2017 privacy assessment did not appear to have been heeded.

Bradley said it was unclear whether the technology was being used in a specific and targeted way or whether officers were taking advantage of its capabilities by entering any number plate that might be associated with the work they were doing.

“The problem is that it’s not how democratic societies work. They have to have a case or a justification for actions against a citizen.”

The extent of police use of the two networks is unknown with, Auror refusing to allow the release of statistics showing how often its systems were accessed by officers. In total, police have said there were 165,700 ANPR queries across both the Auror and SaferCities platforms from July 2021 to June 2022.

For the SaferCities network, which is considered to have less reach than Auror, police access started in November 2020 with 54 searches for vehicles, rising to 11,389 searches a month in September 2022.