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Cutting edge technology and crime

By Allen Koehn - posted Tuesday, 21 October 2008


Second, visible measures such as CCTV cameras play a further role in building public confidence and trust. Last year, security surveillance footage was used to identify the person that abandoned three-year-old Qian Xun Xue (dubbed Pumpkin) at Melbourne’s Southern Cross train station, a process that would have been much more difficult without CCTV in place.

Ultimately, for the potential to be fully realised with any security technology - surveillance based or otherwise - what is needed is a broader focus on the business issue first if the solution is going to deliver on everything you need it to.

Unisys has established the Security Innovation Centre to facilitate this understanding in partnership with the University of Canberra and with the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship as a founding member. The Centre is all about bringing together the best minds from the private sector with the best minds from the University of Canberra and DIAC, in the interests of better security solutions for Australia and our community.

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Road blocks to technology adoption

Funding, manpower and technology maturity along with evidentiary and procedural concerns have been roadblocks to technology adoption inside police services. Civil liberties and privacy considerations are also a critical factor to work through in any new technology initiative.

What is interesting is that attitudes towards privacy today are evolving. Indeed, attitude change has been a key factor in the current review of privacy laws in Australia by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC).

Australians are concerned about privacy. When asked about the issues that concern them, Australians consistently demonstrate that they are more concerned about misuse of their personal information and financial fraud, than they are about any other security issue, according to the Unisys Security Index.

Nearly 98 per cent of Australians indicated that they would be happy to provide extra identifiers such as photographs and fingerprints to verify their identity with banks, government departments and other organisations, if this would prevent fraudulent misuse of their personal details. And younger people are demonstrating a different approach to privacy again, particularly when it comes to sharing of personal information over the Internet and through social networking sites.

The bottom line is that attitudes towards privacy are evolving - across the community and among younger generations. People want to feel secure when they’re using the Internet to do banking online, or simply waiting at a train station. Today there is a much greater willingness to provide personal information if they can see that they get greater security, and convenience, as a result.

Technology to enhance privacy

A key finding of the ALRC Review of Privacy Law has been that some forms of security technology can actually enhance privacy, not diminish it, (particularly biometrics). This has been reiterated by the Australian Privacy Commissioner.

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Previously, some have argued that biometrics technology has the potential to invade an individual’s privacy. But today there is a growing realisation that with the right controls biometrics can actually enhance privacy. There is also growing support for biometrics, with the majority of the community prepared to use biometrics for greater security and improved convenience. So much so that security, privacy and convenience today need to be seen as necessary and coexisting factors in any security initiative, rather than an automatic “trade off” as they once were.

Any technology that lowers the risk of personal information being hacked and misused protects an individual’s privacy. In Australia, Biometrics are already being used at the border in passports and as part of an Enhanced Border Control program being run by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

So while we need to keep privacy at the forefront of any security initiative - particularly in the field of law enforcement and policing - we also need to continue testing any assumptions about the level of community support for one type of initiative over another. This is an important message for police services as it is for other government agencies.

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About the Author

Allen Koehn is Managing Partner, Public Sector, Unisys Asia Pacific.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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