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Speaker 2On ABC Radio National and ABC Listen. We expect to be watched when we're online. To be tracked, to be surveilled. But in real life now, we have ordinary people wearing smart glasses and cameras tracking us in shopping centres and even in our vans. It is impossible to go anywhere or do anything these days without feeling like we're being watched. Because we are. So what rights do we have? Even if it's the authorities doing the watching. My name is Rae Johnston. Welcome to Download This Show on ABC Radio National. Music Now, joining me to unpack some of the biggest stories in surveillance right now, we've got Josh Taylor, who is a technology reporter for The Guardian Australia. Welcome back, Josh. I'm listening and watching. And Tom Solston, who is head of policy at Digital Rights Watch. Welcome to Download This Show, Tom.
Speaker 3Hello. I'm also lurking on the line.
Speaker 2Now, we've come to expect it online. But in real life now, we've got people wearing pervert glasses and cameras in hardware. In hardware stores and even inside our own cars. It's pretty hard to go anywhere or do anything without feeling like we're being watched. Am I being paranoid? Or is this all actually really happening?
Speaker 3Tom? It's like they say, if they're actually out to get you, then you're not paranoid. And no, you're not being paranoid. There are surveillance devices everywhere, whether they're being run by companies or governments or carried around by the government. The technology that allows us to record videos and audio and process it and kind of derive intelligence from it is very cheap now, which means it's very easy for companies to use it in their products. And they're very incentivized to do so because they can build better profiles of us as consumers and then they can use that to advertise at us and kind of, you know, lead us, drive us, and get as much revenue that they can get. So no, it is a real problem. It's been a problem for a little while, but I feel like the kind of wearable space is really hotting up and it's become quite a big problem right now.
Speaker 2Thinking about all of these profiles that are being built on us to sell us things, is the driving factor really just consumerism? Am I hearing that right?
Speaker 3I mean, for the companies, yes. And I think just consumerism kind of understates the size of internet companies and the amount of advertising revenue that they make. You know, Facebook and kind of other ad companies, but mostly Meta at this point, have completely dominated the advert for online advertisements. And the reason they can do that is because they can micro-target individuals to push adverts at. So the rates that they get, for their adverts, are pretty good. So I'm afraid a lot of it is pretty banal. It is just that kind of, you know, how can we sell more advertising into your eyeballs? Advertising's a pretty big market. And it's also easy for, you know, other companies who want to get some of that intelligence. They want to make, you know, more money out of their products. And for governments and surveillance services to say, hey, we want to know more about you as well. Can we get our hands on that data too? And I think that's part of the, part of the, part of the reason why this is a big problem is it's not just about seeing adverts. It's also about the data that's collected on us then becomes available to security services, police forces, and some other, you know, law enforcement-like agencies that are really not that big a deal. And maybe they shouldn't be looking at all of that kind of personal data that we have that's been monetized.
Speaker 2I definitely want to get a little bit more into what authorities can access about us and how they can, how they can follow us as opposed to the general public. But I just want to step back a little bit first. Josh, can you give me an update on what has colloquially become known as the pervert glasses rule? So these smart glasses that people are wearing and filming people in public. I'm aware that there's been a few different updates with local councils, but where are we at today? You know, where, where are our rights in regards to opting out of being filmed by someone wearing a pair of modified Ray-Bans?
Speaker 4I mean, the question, the answer is it depends really, because it basically comes down to where you live and which law potentially applies to you. So we've seen the privacy commissioner, the federal privacy commissioner announced recently that she's now launching an investigation to the Chinese-based company behind the HeyCN app, which is the app that is used within, um, the Kmart and co-branded cheap $89 smart glasses. Um, Kmart has since taken that product off the shelf, but that announcement kind of showed the limits federally because ultimately the federal privacy act really just applies to companies and organizations and how they're handling your data. It's not really the place where you're going to take individual action against someone who might've been using this to film you kind of thing. So that's really exposed. But, but separately from that, we've seen, you know, as you, as you mentioned, local councils in, in, I think three different states now, at least now in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland proactively ban wearing smart glasses in pools and gyms and a few other places. And so it really just depends where you are at this stage. And there's no sort of real overarching like regulation around it. The greens federally are trying to push a bill that would basically ban, you know, nationally for, for 12 months. Uh, except for people who need it for, for helping their vision. But would they introduced a import controls? Like, uh, is it going to be sort of an enforceable thing against like basically a state police going to be enforcing it? It's really hard to see how it would all work if there was sort of a one overarching band that would cover the entire country.
Speaker 2Yeah, it does raise a lot of questions. I'm sure we'll get answers to further down the track. It's so to give me an idea of where, where we are right now, do we, as individual members of Australian society, actually have a right not to be filmed and recorded and tracked and followed? You can we can where can we go without being filmed or all public places? Just a bit of a free for all right now.
Speaker 4I think public places are basically a free for all the moment is that you don't have a reasonable expectation for privacy when you're out in public. The interesting component of that is filming is one thing, but recording is another. And, um, uh, you know, recording conversations. This is a different more like there are different laws in different parts of the country. So I mean, Victoria, for example, uh, is a one party consent state. So only one person who's part of the conversations need to consent to it. But in, uh, in New South Wales, it's actually a two party consent state. So both parties to a conversation into consent. I think that's going to be interesting because and, and you know, Apple watches is releasing an update later this year where you can record the last 15 seconds of a conversation and rewind and replay it. And what does that mean in, in, you know, in terms of surveillance devices laws? We don't know, but, uh, that's just another example of sort of the wearable stuff where we're not really sure what's going to be happening with that, but maybe a little bit less creepy than the glasses, but we'll potentially butt up against some, some legal issues when it comes out.
Speaker 2Revolutionarily, we could just ask someone to repeat what they just said. It feels like a decent thought there. Tom, what's your perspective?
Speaker 3I mean, my, my bet on that one is that, you know, there's someone senior at Apple who keeps forgetting things that their, their wife, or husband has said to them and doesn't want to keep asking them to repeat themselves. And that's why we're all getting this thing pushed at us.
Speaker 2So from a personal level, from a, from an empowerment level as an individual, can we opt out? Can we ask someone to stop filming us? Can we get things shut down? What are our options here?
Speaker 3I mean, you can always ask someone to stop filming you. The, the problem with the glasses, which is emergent is that you don't always know if that's the case. So, you know, photography, has existed for 150 years now and you need some equipment to go and do that. And it's normally fairly sizable. And you can tell if someone is, is filming you in a public space, like you can, you can see them waving around, you know, either a camera or a phone or something like that. And you can make some decisions about that. You can ask them to stop. You could just walk away. You could change your behavior so that, you know, maybe whatever they're recording you doing, you stop doing, but you're able to kind of make some decisions about, about your privacy based on what you see those people around you doing. And the problem with the glasses, of course, is you, you know, you don't know if someone is recording. You don't necessarily know if the glasses they're wearing are the smart ones. Now, I should say that, you know, many of the glasses do have built in, you know, like a recording light or something. But those things are very easily defeated either through software or, you know, one of the companies that exists on the internet that will unplug that light for you so you can use the glasses in a, you know, a very stealthy way. So the problem is not just, you know, being in public and potentially being filmed or photographed. It's knowing that you've been filmed or photographed and being able to moderate your behavior as a result of that.
Speaker 4I think it's interesting. I think that we've seen some promises of some apps coming out that will be able to detect the Bluetooth setting for some of these devices and be able to switch them off if they're nearby you. And I think that's kind of interesting. The other thing that I like is the public shame factor is actually quite strong. So, you know, we've, we've, started talking about it as pervert glasses and a lot of people that, you know, David Swan from the Sydney Morning Herald said he felt, feels a bit weird about wearing them now. And I've seen US reporters who have been talking that they feel like it's wearing a cyber truck on your face now when you're out and about because people just have this negative association with it. So public shame is doing quite a lot here.
Speaker 3I've been wondering if the reason that Kmart have, have dropped them from the catalog is because, you know, they want to be a squeaky clean family, friendly shop and selling a pervert glasses is not really the way that you do that. Or is it kind of consumer demand just saying like, yeah, we don't want to buy pervert glasses anymore, whether they're from Kmart or Meta or whoever.
Speaker 2Now, last time we discussed smart glasses on Download This Show and referred to them as pervert glasses the entire way through the program, we did have it pointed out to us by a few listeners that they are, of course, accessibility devices used by a portion of the community, not to underplay the positive uses of the technology in any instance. It's just in this case, it seems to overwhelmingly be used by bad actors, unfortunately. So I'm really sorry to everyone who has attached their brand to these glasses, but the people that are using them are not using them for good things. You are listening to Download This Show on ABC Radio National, Rae Johnston here with you. And one of the big questions that comes to mind as we see the rise of surveillance, specifically by authorities overseas, specifically in the US, is do we have that same kind of thing happening here? I see this huge backlash towards flock cameras, for instance, in the US. I think we should start with a bit of an explanation, though. Tom, what is a flock camera?
Speaker 3So flock is a company in the US. They make surveillance cameras and other surveillance devices that feed into their platform. So they record video and kind of store that in their, you know, their servers. And they sell that to mostly law enforcement, kind of police forces like local police departments. And again, mostly for traffic management. So most of their cameras are number plate recognition cameras. So they will, you know, see people driving or they will see number plates driving around. And, you know, police can query that and say, you know, have you seen this car? We think it's stolen or what have you. They also provide a very interesting, slightly problematic thing that listens for gunshots in neighborhoods. So it just records all of the audio in a neighborhood. And if it hears something it thinks is a gunshot, you know, it can summon some police officers. So in that instance, it's, you know, that's what it does. The problem is, of course, that because it is a law enforcement platform, it then gets kind of tangled up with all of the problems that exist in kind of law enforcement in the United States. And so, you know, we have seen instances where, you know, it's made a mistake. I think very famously, it was unable to tell the difference between number plates from different states. And so you could have the same number on a completely different car, which happened. And, you know, a perfectly innocent family was pulled over, dragged out of their car and held at gunpoint by the police. And so, you know, we have seen instances where, you know, a perfectly innocent family was pulled over, dragged out of their car and held at gunpoint by the police. You know, and this was, this was kids, right? This was, you know, mom and dad and some kids were having this kind of very unwarranted and unwanted police interaction, because the cameras had misidentified them. So it's this kind of unholy combination of pervasive video surveillance matched with, you know, some image recognition and some artificial intelligence that's not that smart, matched up with some police departments who are also not that smart. And so it's this kind of unholy combination of pervasive video surveillance matched with, you know, some image recognition and some artificial intelligence that's not that smart, matched up with some police departments who are also not that smart. And so it's this kind of unholy combination of pervasive video surveillance matched with, you know, some police departments who are also not that smart, matched up with some police
Speaker 2departments who are also not that smart. And so it's this kind of unholy combination
Speaker 4of pervasive video surveillance matched with, you know, some police departments who are also not that smart, matched up with, you know, some police departments who are also not that smart.
Speaker 3And it does raise some questions about whether police can use that to just go fishing, you know, pull over someone that they don't like the look of, go through their phone and see if they can find something nefarious on there. And if that's going to happen, it seems very likely that the sort of people who will have that done to them will be the sorts of populations that we normally see overpoliced in the first place. So, you know, First Nations people, anyone at a protest. Um, you know, anyone foreign will, will have more of that kind of inflicted upon them. Um, and that's, that's why it's a really, a really worrying thing.
Speaker 4And I think the, the most sort of concerning part is that basically it requires, it puts a, it compels the person who's foreign who's being taken to provide their, you know, passcode to unlock it. And, uh, I think that the, you often do see that when people get arrested as well. That's, that's one of the things they have to do. There's, there's laws basically saying if you don't, don't provide this information, then you're breaching the law. Um, but most people would probably encounter this when they come through, uh, you know, border force when they come back into Australia. That has always been seen as an extraordinary power. It's like, why do border force have powers on any random citizen to be able to force them to unlock their phone and allow them to download the contacts that they wouldn't have, that police wouldn't have walking down the street? And it seems like now, rather than sort of addressing that privacy risk, you know, when you come back into Australia from overseas, they're just giving police on the street the powers now. It's a bit horrible.
Speaker 2Yeah. So devil's advocate question here, which I hate to do, but I'm sure some people have it. If you're not doing anything wrong, if you're not hiding anything in your phone, if you're not a criminal, if you're not doing the wrong thing, why do we have to be worried about the police hoovering up all of the information from our personal devices?
Speaker 3So if you are, you know, a person, if you're a younger person, it's quite likely that you've taken some spicy photos of yourself. Or received them from, you know, from a lover in the past. They might well live on your phone. And if, you know, police can pull you over and demand a look at that, that's got nothing to do with law enforcement. It might just be because you're a pretty person and they want to see what you look like naked. And that's grossly invasive.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a really good example, Tom. What do you think, Josh? What's the problem if I've got nothing to hide?
Speaker 4People have a right to privacy. And I think that if you have done nothing wrong, you should not have your privacy violated. Just because they're trying to catch everyone else out. People don't go, you know, emptying their underwear drawer on the street kind of thing. Like people want to have a certain level of their own privacy. And, you know, it's been the argument for privacy defeatists for the longest time that all these social media companies have all their information. Therefore, you know, who cares about privacy? It doesn't really matter. But like people have a right to their own identity and control over how they're perceived and everything like that. And I think that there should really, should be more of a debate about like what it actually means in practice when anyone at any point in time can be stopped on the street and have their phone downloaded by police.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think there's always a presumption of trust in authority that they're doing the right thing as well, that everyone in these positions are also good actors. But that's not what we've seen with surveillance technology being used, especially in the US. You know, I'm thinking of the cases of police officers that were using the FLOC license plate detection, cameras to be able to track an ex and to be able to stalk people. And these are instances that have come to light publicly. So, you know, we might not be doing anything wrong, but the authorities might not exactly be doing the right thing either.
Speaker 3We did have a case a small number of years ago in Queensland where a police officer was using the, you know, the police database to send his mate details of the friend's ex so that he could go and torment her and abuse her. And that was, you know, that was pretty shocking, A, that that happened. There was then, you know, the police officer was suspended. There was investigation. There was a trial. And at the end of it all, he's back on the force as if nothing has happened. So not only do we have this problem where, you know, the police have access to large amounts of our personal private data, not only can some of them not be trusted with that data, but also we don't have very good systems for holding those officers to account when they're on the ground. And there are problems.
Speaker 2You are listening to Download This Show on ABC Radio National. Ray Johnston here with you. And so we've got strangers in the street and businesses and even law enforcement all following and recording us. It's all feeling quite firmly dystopian right now. So I would love to feel at least a little empowered going out of this conversation. What can we do? What should we be looking for before we buy a new gadget or sign up to a service?
Speaker 4Josh? Well, I think if we just come back to smart glasses, for example, that has been a very sort of community-led response where people are turning on them quite quickly. You know, we had petitions and the government was very quick to act on that. And so, like, that was quite good. In terms of just buying a new gadget, like if you're worried about how a device that you're buying might be tracking you or anything like that, you've got the terms and conditions, but you can Google around a bit, look into the company and stuff like that, see if you're okay with how they're handling your data. But it is still a bit of a minefield. It's really just quite hard to actually go through because, you know, they try to make it as hard as possible.
Speaker 2Yeah, sorry, you go.
Speaker 3I was going to say, I might jump in if that's all right and slightly reject the premise of the question because I don't think it should be up to us as individuals, as consumers, to do that work. You know, if you go and buy a product in Australia, you can be pretty safe because you know that that product has been regulated. There are rules and laws about it that determine how that thing works, right? Like, you go and buy a car, you don't have to worry about, like, is the car going to kill me? You know, it's going to have seatbelts, it's going to have lights, it's going to have all of those features because our laws require that. So the what do we do about it is actually, it's not down to us. We shouldn't have to go and read every single privacy policy because if we do that, it will take us literally months out of every year to read all of the terms and conditions for every service and every product that we use. So what we do is we put more pressure onto our governments to give our regulators better tools to be able to go to these companies and say, you've got to do the right thing. And some of that's going through kind of the parliamentary process right now in terms of privacy law reform and the digital duty of care, kind of introducing these ideas of fair and reasonable. So it's not about a contract between someone who buys a product and the company who makes it, but it's actually the company itself has to behave in a way that is both fair and reasonable. And if it doesn't, there are consequences for them for doing that. So do you think surveillance tech is inevitable, Tom? I think there are very powerful interests in society who want surveillance tech. It exists. It's not going to go away. So in that instance, yes, it's inevitable. But that doesn't mean that we are powerless. We have got plenty of tools at our disposal to have a voice in this, to have a knife in this fight and to say, hey, look, dear politicians, you work for us. Your job, or at least part of your job, is to protect us from dodgy companies that want to invade our privacy and monetize us. So you need to put in some good regulations to protect us from that. And I think you can also apply that logic to politicians and we can say, hey, look, you know, we've got a reasonable government here. We need some bills of rights so that if one day we have an unreasonable government, we citizens have ways of protecting ourselves from it.
Speaker 2Josh, you're in this reporting on it pretty much every day. How do you feel empowered instead of overwhelmed by all of this?
Speaker 4I mean, it's coming back to what I was thinking before about community. So, you know, I've been doing a lot of reporting on data centers. We've seen a couple of data center projects fall over because there's been a community backlash. We've seen withdrawal of one smart glasses product now due to community backlash. We're seeing flock cameras in the U.S. face a lot of criticism. And, you know, they try to sell these products as basically being all about convenience. But when the pushback on this sort of outweighs the convenience that you might get from it, I think that's where the tension lies. If it becomes too much of a hassle, they're going to stop. And we're starting to see that in a couple of different areas now. And that's all
Speaker 2we have for this week. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any Download This Show episodes in the future. And please keep all of your feedback coming. You can send me an email at downloadthisshow at abc.net.au. Myself or my wonderful producer, Jessie Kay, will receive and reply to that. Or you can slide into my DMs on Instagram at Ray Johnston. You can also leave us a review and a rating on any of the podcast platforms. This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal, Burra Mudigal, Dharug, Gundungurra and Wurundjeri peoples. I'm Ray Johnston and you've been listening to Download This Show on ABC Radio National.
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