Australian Identity-Matching Services Bill

Since 2017, the Australian federal government has pushed for political and legal changes to make facial recognition technology more widely available to civil and policing agencies. These efforts, part of a long-term and continuing expansion of surveillance powers by the Australian federal government, have culminated in a new biometric identity-information system. Federal authorities have argued that facial recognition technology is useful for law enforcement and preventing identity fraud, but to achieve those benefits, they have combined civil and criminal, as well as state and federal, identity systems into a powerful intelligence apparatus controlled by a single government department: the Australian Department of Home Affairs.