Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
WA Police say live AI facial recognition “increases our freedom.” Sure. Dragnet scanning random citizens to find dementia patients is a “humanitarian mission,” and catching criminals who forgot their sunglasses and N95 masks is peak safety. Up is down, war is peace.
The AI surveillance police state is here. Well, in Western Australia, at least.
As the ABC reported recently, “Police mass AI surveillance pilot draws rebuke from privacy experts.” Yes, the Western Australia Police Force has been running a trial using live facial recognition technology in public. The idea is that if you’re on a police watchlist, and you happen to walk past a facial recognition van, the police will be alerted to your presence, and you’ll be swiftly arrested.
Apart from the obvious privacy concerns, facial recognition has one major flaw: it requires people’s faces to be uncovered. I can see it now. It won’t take long for criminals—or just concerned citizens who value their privacy—to figure out the cheat code.
The only way for the government to fix this glaring flaw in the technology is to either make public face coverings illegal—a human rights nightmare—or grant police the power to demand people strip off masks and visors on the street for the sake of an AI scan. If you’re entering a secure building, that might be warranted. But forcing ordinary citizens to uncover their faces for the purpose of mass passive scanning? That would be a severe breach of civil liberties.
But apart from those minor oversights, AI is truly the ultimate tool for catching criminals… and keeping the rest of us thoroughly in check, which isn’t much better.
Proponents of the technology—and fans of government overreach in general—will inevitably argue: “If you’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, then what’s the problem? Only criminals fear surveillance.”
To that, my only response is: let’s take that logic to its natural conclusion. If total surveillance is purely about safety and stopping crime, why stop at facial recognition vans? Why not assign a personal AI drone to hover over every citizen 24 hours a day? That would be the ultimate crime prevention tool. If an AI drone is constantly tracking your movements and reporting suspicious behaviour to the police, 99% of crime vanishes overnight. Problem solved. Safety guaranteed.
On Facebook, you can watch Police Commissioner Col Blanch talking up the new facial recognition technology, explaining that it’s all about “transparency and public safety.” He notes that it’s not just being used to track down criminals, but also to find missing people and elderly citizens with dementia. Ah, see? It’s a humanitarian mission!
He goes on to reassure us that images of community members who aren’t on a watchlist are “automatically pixelated in real time and are not stored.” Phew! I feel better already.
But just in case you still have any lingering doubts, here is his most breathtakingly Orwellian quote of all—and this is word-for-word: “This is actually a way that we can increase the freedoms and privacy of our community.”
Ah, of course! Scanning the biometric data of every random passerby on the street is actually increasing our freedom and privacy. Up is down, left is right, and state-sponsored mass facial recognition is personal liberty. Silly me for getting it mixed up.
To be fair to the Commissioner, what he means is that standard CCTV cameras record and store unpixelated footage of everyone unconditionally, whereas this new AI system pixelates innocent bystanders in real time and allegedly discards the image. So, in his mind, replacing passive recording with active biometric screening is somehow a victory for personal freedom.
The ABC article is generally critical of the technology from a privacy and ethical standpoint, but naturally, our national broadcaster couldn’t resist bringing identity politics into the mix. Cue the headline: “It’s going to catch more Aboriginal people.”
In the article, they interview Peter Collins, director of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, who claims First Nations people are being intentionally targeted and says many of them believe they live in a police state.
Look, I agree—it is turning into a police state. But we’re complaining about two completely different things. My concern is that mass facial recognition strips away privacy and fundamental rights from innocent, law-abiding citizens. Their concern appears to be that the technology makes it harder for Aboriginal people with active arrest warrants to avoid being caught.
Anyway, what do you think? Is mass AI surveillance a price worth paying to catch the occasional criminal foolish enough to stroll past a giant police van with their face uncovered? Or are we blindly handing over our fundamental liberties to a growing police state?
MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn
WA Police say live AI facial recognition “increases our freedom.” Sure. Dragnet scanning random citizens to find dementia patients is a “humanitarian mission,” and catching criminals who forgot their sunglasses and N95 masks is peak safety. Up is down, war is peace.
The AI surveillance police state is here. Well, in Western Australia, at least.
As the ABC reported recently, “Police mass AI surveillance pilot draws rebuke from privacy experts.” Yes, the Western Australia Police Force has been running a trial using live facial recognition technology in public. The idea is that if you’re on a police watchlist, and you happen to walk past a facial recognition van, the police will be alerted to your presence, and you’ll be swiftly arrested.
Apart from the obvious privacy concerns, facial recognition has one major flaw: it requires people’s faces to be uncovered. I can see it now. It won’t take long for criminals—or just concerned citizens who value their privacy—to figure out the cheat code.
The only way for the government to fix this glaring flaw in the technology is to either make public face coverings illegal—a human rights nightmare—or grant police the power to demand people strip off masks and visors on the street for the sake of an AI scan. If you’re entering a secure building, that might be warranted. But forcing ordinary citizens to uncover their faces for the purpose of mass passive scanning? That would be a severe breach of civil liberties.
But apart from those minor oversights, AI is truly the ultimate tool for catching criminals… and keeping the rest of us thoroughly in check, which isn’t much better.
Proponents of the technology—and fans of government overreach in general—will inevitably argue: “If you’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, then what’s the problem? Only criminals fear surveillance.”
To that, my only response is: let’s take that logic to its natural conclusion. If total surveillance is purely about safety and stopping crime, why stop at facial recognition vans? Why not assign a personal AI drone to hover over every citizen 24 hours a day? That would be the ultimate crime prevention tool. If an AI drone is constantly tracking your movements and reporting suspicious behaviour to the police, 99% of crime vanishes overnight. Problem solved. Safety guaranteed.
On Facebook, you can watch Police Commissioner Col Blanch talking up the new facial recognition technology, explaining that it’s all about “transparency and public safety.” He notes that it’s not just being used to track down criminals, but also to find missing people and elderly citizens with dementia. Ah, see? It’s a humanitarian mission!
He goes on to reassure us that images of community members who aren’t on a watchlist are “automatically pixelated in real time and are not stored.” Phew! I feel better already.
But just in case you still have any lingering doubts, here is his most breathtakingly Orwellian quote of all—and this is word-for-word: “This is actually a way that we can increase the freedoms and privacy of our community.”
Ah, of course! Scanning the biometric data of every random passerby on the street is actually increasing our freedom and privacy. Up is down, left is right, and state-sponsored mass facial recognition is personal liberty. Silly me for getting it mixed up.
To be fair to the Commissioner, what he means is that standard CCTV cameras record and store unpixelated footage of everyone unconditionally, whereas this new AI system pixelates innocent bystanders in real time and allegedly discards the image. So, in his mind, replacing passive recording with active biometric screening is somehow a victory for personal freedom.
The ABC article is generally critical of the technology from a privacy and ethical standpoint, but naturally, our national broadcaster couldn’t resist bringing identity politics into the mix. Cue the headline: “It’s going to catch more Aboriginal people.”
In the article, they interview Peter Collins, director of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, who claims First Nations people are being intentionally targeted and says many of them believe they live in a police state.
Look, I agree—it is turning into a police state. But we’re complaining about two completely different things. My concern is that mass facial recognition strips away privacy and fundamental rights from innocent, law-abiding citizens. Their concern appears to be that the technology makes it harder for Aboriginal people with active arrest warrants to avoid being caught.
Anyway, what do you think? Is mass AI surveillance a price worth paying to catch the occasional criminal foolish enough to stroll past a giant police van with their face uncovered? Or are we blindly handing over our fundamental liberties to a growing police state?
MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn
