………Ah, I….
Māori data specialists are accusing the government of ignoring them while going ahead and expanding the reach of facial recognition technology.
Technology in use for three years at Internal Affairs was being extended for the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to use, and extended so it could search the driver licence photo database at the transport agency, Waka Kotahi.
It was part of work by seven major agencies led by Internal Affairs on a new approach to digital identity, which the government argues would give people more control over their own data, and more security.
…ok.
Ok.
Look.
Y-E-S, outrageous that there has been such manipulative disposal of a Māori world view perspective regarding the taking of facial identification for an Eye of Mordor mass surveillance programme that has been secretly occurring beneath the surface while attention has been consumed by Covid at a time when the State is freaking out about domestic terrorism.
S-U-R-E, it’s unacceptable for a programme that has cultural implications hasn’t been properly vetted by Māori.
B-U-T, the issue isn’t that there hasn’t been Māori Departmental oversight, it’s that the fucking State has quietly sewn up inter Departmental means of sharing face recognition data in real time to the Police and any number of internal security agencies with barely a ripple on the surface of public debate?
Information you gave to the MSD for private purposes in order to get state aid should remain within that agency without it being available to any other State agency.
There are reasons a Government agency has data on you, that’s for a specific purpose, it shouldn’t be accessible to any other agency!
That’s what all this inter Department collusion is achieving. Vast unchecked mass surveillance over the domestic population with no checks, no balances and the only discussion surfacing are over procedural identity politics machinations???
This isn’t a cultural appropriation issue, this is a vast human rights assault happening in real time!
The issue isn’t Māori faces! It’s that they are taking faces in the first place!
This is the same debate happening over at the Department of Statistics and the ability for the Deep State to access their data as well!
The media are not discussing the ramifications of what is happening here, this entire fight is being conducted beneath the surface without anyone knowing how much of an enormous move it represents.
The State are building an enormous spy system that will have real time power to intrude deep into your life to the point of automatic real time surveillance using interdepartmental private information.
The State freaked out over the Dumb Lives Matter Parliament Protest and the impact of radicalisation that has had on the political landscape alongside bad faith grifters, international agitators and social media hate algorithms has resulted in a maximisation of quietly developed face recognition software and hardware upgrades while connecting departments with new cross search technology and systems.
Where is the oversight to this vast ramping up of civil surveillance?
Where is the debate about that?
The Police were busted using face recognition without any sign off from the Privacy Commissioner!
Why trust any of this to be quietly conducted in the shadows when there is so much power being self granted here?
What happens if we get a very punitive Government who wants to be heavy handed on certain groups and uses the full force of the State, every single department all at once on one person who is deemed a threat.
Do we understand what we are building here?
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