Police too loose with number plate recognition system, review finds
Photo:
Supplied
The police have been too loose using systems that identify vehicle number plates and must tighten up, a new review has found.
Police use of two privately-run automated number-plate recognition (ANPR) systems, Auror and SaferCities, has soared.
The review by police only covered Auror. It found anyone with a police email could use the system, even many who had no reason to, and they did not have to say why they were accessing it.
"With the limited controls on who can log into the platform and no system requirement to enter the lawful basis on which the information is being obtained, there is a risk of misuse by staff (intentional or unintentional)," the 35-page review said.
The public would lose trust if police went too far in accessing personal information using Auror, it warned.
"Police are working on restricting access."
Auror was set up with help from police a decade ago and had grown internationally, as well as to the extent New Zealand officers used it at least 250,000 times - and probably 380,000 times - last year.
The review did not set out to uncover any misuse; that was out of scope. An earlier general review of ANPR found a few isolated instances of misuse.
Auror's software can make sense of retailers' CCTV footage of vehicles and people. Crime reports via Auror have doubled to 12,000 a month since 2022. In addition, police can use it to tell where a vehicle has been spotted over the past 60 days.
Overall, the system boosted crime fighting and had a wide number of uses, the review found.
But there had been limited internal audit of police use of it.
"Improved information storage systems would enable safer use of information with greater transparency.
"As many police employees have no operational requirement to access Auror (or other Police systems such as NIA [national intelligence application]), the reviewers consider access should be limited to those with an operational need."
Auror supported this, it said.
Police had been told to fix the loose controls before but "issues associated with access and insufficient recording of information about the nature of the searches identified in this review persist".
The review several times linked Auror to facial recognition, though Auror has previously said it does not use that technology.
Its application called Connect the Dots "is a form of facial recognition technology, however the only source of images [of suspects] for comparison are those provided by retailers into the platform".
Auror said it had been transparent about the use of image matching, as
RNZ has previously reported
.
"It is also clear
on our website
," it said. The website calls it "face matching".
RNZ reported earlier this week on a
surge of theft and shoplifting reports
to police via Auror, after it taught retailers how to provide better footage and details, like names, to make it past the police system that vetted reports for "solvability".
The new review underscored how the ANPR was a doubled-edged sword.
"Trust and confidence in police is negatively affected where personal information is used beyond the mandate provided to police in legislation."
This problem was at the heart of several failed legal challenges last year against police use of ANPR evidence in court.
The review added: "Additionally, where offences are reported to police with clear details of offending and information providing lines of enquiry to identify suspects, inaction by police
will also impact trust and confidence."
Auror had been generating more information than police knew what to do with.
"The volume of offences processed and reported through Auror will always outpace police's ability to investigate them," it said.
Too much poor quality information would just jam up any data storage.
"Police will need to consider how best to prioritise who is held to account within the available resources while maintaining trust and confidence."
The trend is upwards; a data review in March showed retailers had improved their crime reports.
Police were now moving to change the way they assessed reports, including through a new initial assessment team that would be trialled.
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