At the entrance to my street in Carlton is a closed circuit TV (CCTV) surveillance camera, part of the network installed throughout Melbourne’s CBD and parts of Carlton as part of the City of Melbourne’s “Safe City Cameras Program”. All major expansions of the network have been funded by and in partnership with the Victorian Government.
On 6 May 2025, City of Melbourne Councillors agreed to a motion moved by the Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece that the Future Melbourne Committee requests City of Melbourne Management to, among other items:
Consider permitting the use of camera footage by Council authorised officers for the investigation and enforcement of incidents including:
- damage to public or private property
- defacement or destruction of the natural environment
- acts of public nuisance, and
- other enforcement issues that result in costs to the organisation and ratepayers.
Review options regarding the use of video analytics to enhance the effectiveness of the Safe City Camera Program
Management was requested to report to Council on the outcomes of its review by July. To date, no further information has been publicly released by the Council on the Management review.
The catalyst for the Future Melbourne Committee requesting this work is not clear. Nor are the specific problems that could be addressed by the use of video analytics that would justify the deployment of this mass surveillance technology. Melbourne is ranked highly in both safe cities and liveable cities indexes.
In an interview with ABC Radio, the Lord Mayor cited a potential use case for video analytics as identifying dumped shopping trolleys. This example paralleled reporting from January that in Queensland, Logan City Council is using AI software linked to its CCTV network of 1,400 cameras that allows staff and police to search for categories including car number plates or “people wearing backpacks”. The stated uses for the system included identifying dumped vehicles; graffiti, illegal dumping and abandoned vehicles.
Such innocuous examples for the use of video analytics in government-funded CCTV networks obscures the reality that this technology provides wholly different capabilities than traditional video surveillance by enabling objects on the screen to be separated out, categorised, isolated and tracked across time and place.
In the US, a video analytics tool called Track is already used by 400 customers including state and local police departments and universities. MIT Technology Review observed that unlike facial recognition technology, people can be tracked without footage in which faces are clearly visible:
‘You can use it to find people by specifying body size, gender, hair colour and style, shoes, clothing and various accessories. The tool can then assemble timelines, tracking a person across different locations and video feeds.”
The deployment of mass surveillance technologies by local councils has social implications that should be transparently discussed. What impact would the use of video analytics on CCTV streams have on the rights to freedom of expression, association and movement?
Privacy risks include unreasonably intrusive surveillance; over-collection of information, and lack of transparency.
The Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner in introducing its “Guiding Principles for Surveillance” highlights that surveillance not undertaken with a privacy enhancing approach has the potential to interfere with various civil liberties that are fundamental to Victoria’s democracy.
History shows that interferences with fundamental human rights such as invasions of privacy do not impact everyone equally. There is a very real potential for certain demographics or groups to be targeted by the use of video analytics.
No adequate legal guardrails
The Information Privacy Principles in Victoria’s Privacy and Data Protection Act that bind the City of Melbourne are technology neutral, non-prescriptive and principle based.
There is no dedicated legal framework that governs the use of facial recognition or video analytics technology with CCTV camera feeds. As highlighted in a report by UTS’ Human Technology Institute existing laws do not provide effective legal guardrails to ensure such technologies are deployed in a manner that upholds the rights to privacy and the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly.
Our future Melbourne needs to be safe and also people-centred and inclusive; governed and led in a manner that respects the human dignity and civil liberties of its residents and visitors.