SA Plods plonk boots on privacy principles with fingerprint scanners With a state election due in March, the government in the state of South Australian has set privacy advocates' teeth on edge over the proposed use of fingerprint scanners by SA Police. The state government has tested the NEC scanners, and has said it's going ahead with a deployment of 150 units, which will be linked to Android …
The police can have my prints every day of the week and twice a day on weekends, so long as the scanning process isn't an onerously long affair. So far as I understand the current law, the police can already legally compel people to provide ID. How is this fingerprinting business such an invasion of privacy that the 'privacy advocates' want to have a sook?
Errr, because once they get stored (prints of every citizen?) you could then get picked out in a weak match (5 or 6 points) and get brought in for questioning over perhaps a child murder and have to effectively prove your innocence. However, no smoke without fire in the public/your neighbours' minds. After all, they have a match and you were home alone watching TV.
Is it clear yet?
Your post is yet more evidence of how cognitive thought deficient some of the public really are.
@Mark65: The benefit of my cognitively deficient thoughts are that I don't spend my life consumed with worry about the *potential* negative opinion of neighbors/public, who themselves are such mental powerhouses that they can't grasp the difference between being questioned and being found guilty.
@AC: I don't doubt the ability of the police/prosecutors to convict innocent people, either by malice or more probably incompetence. It's just that I don't see the police being able to fingerprint people as making that noticeably more or less likely.
You should care because one you are on a database it makes it far too easy for Police to just rely on this, rather than doing actual real detective work. Mistakes happen that can ruin your life. Do a search for "Adam Scott dna" if you want to see a real life case of this sort of mistake (dna not fingerprints, but the principle applies).
Probably troll. Either that or you are a unit of the state perhaps ? A bit part of the machinery? With infinite time to waste on every petty bureaucrat who wants to feel power ? Definitely not a citizen to whom the state should have probable cause to interfere with. Unless you were elected in the last 15 years, so no rules apply it seems when snout are in trough. Not to mention the risk of wrongfully being targeted by the human capacity for ignoring the obvious and making sure the subject of current obsession is convicted.
"(although, for example, if no action follows the arrest, the fingerprints probably shouldn't be stored for long)"
Speaking for QLD, over here you *will* get fingerprinted (via a nice digital scanner if you are at one of the major watchhouses) and photographed when arrested (and possible DNA-sampled depending on the reason). These biometrics are stored in the database for as long as the prosecution proceeds. IF THE CHARGES ARE DROPPED OR IF YOU ARE FOUND NOT-GUILTY all fingerprints, photos and DNA samples related to those charges must be destroyed immediately (the fact they were taken, however, remains in the database for legal reason in case someone questions the proceedings later on).
Caveat :- if you were previously found guilty, your new fingerprints/photos/DNA samples are considered updates of the previous biometrics... which means they stay, even if you are not guilty of this particular crime.
Not really an election issue. Standard procedure is to accidentally release a violent crim and oh-no the resultant carnage could have been avoided by solution looking for a problem product X. The petting zoo will knee jerk to avoid ministerial embarrassment and presto - new police powers! Next thing that will happen is VIC will introduce the policy to bring it into line with SA. From there it will spread to the other disease centres in the country and another civil liberty bites the dust for the greater good.
In Queensland they are introducing the requirement that all tattoo parlour operators must have their fingerprints recorded in CrimTrac before their tattoo license will be renewed. You don't even need to be a criminal! They also said the prints will remain in the system permanently and can be used to match prints from crime scenes..
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