6 Henderson Valley Road, Henderson, Auckland 0612
Private Bag 92250, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Ph 09 355 3553
Fax 09 355 3550
6 November 2014
Thomas Beagle
[FYI request #2067 email]
Dear Mr Beagle,
Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987
CAS-401337-F2P5T5
Thank you for contacting Auckland Transport on the 1st of October requesting information
about surveillance and tracking systems.
We have listed your questions in bold type below with our responses to follow.
1. Descriptions of the facilities that Auckland Transport are using with that
system. i.e. an overview of the system and what it does.
The CCTV VMS Solution that Auckland Transport is implementing is to consolidate 5
legacy VMS solutions onto one standard platform across Auckland Transport. It has
the following key facilities:
New user interface that Operators will use to control and manage the CTV
assets. This will be the same across the organisation
Analytics capability to enable better monitoring of the network by enabling
cameras to monitor scenes and reporting back to Operators should a
specified event happen i.e. vandalism, stationary car on intersection, person
on tracks etc.
Alerts/events to come up on the new user interface which are driven by the
analytics engine which the Operator can then respond to as appropriate.
Capturing useful data that will enable Auckland Transport to manage its
network better. This would include, but not be limited to
o Traffic queue management,
o Car counting for road maintenance purposes
o Passengers numbers
aucklandtransport.govt.nz
o Vandalism monitoring
o Public safety on various networks
2. Copies of any communications with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner
about privacy or other issues surrounding the system.
Communications with the Privacy Commission were in regard to possible future
additional uses of cameras and analytics, not for uses which Auckland Transport has
specific plans for.
Communications are attached
.
3. Copies of the protocols, instructions, manuals and training materials
concerning the collection, storing, use and release of the information within
the scope of the system.
Auckland Transport procedures and operating guidelines are currently being
reviewed internally and are still currently in review. These will be made available
shortly.
Please see attached responses from vendor concerning releasing of information.
4. Please send me a copy of the Auckland Council memorandum of
understanding which was used to create the contract (as mentioned in the
Stuff article).
Please clarify whether this is the Auckland Council Strategic Action Plan.
Furthermore, please answer the following questions:
1. Does Auckland Transport currently use or plan to use any form of facial
recognition software? If yes, please give details.
Auckland Transport does not currently use and does not plan to use Facial
recognition capability of the CCTV solution.
2. Does Auckland Transport currently use or plan to use any form of automated
number plate recognition? If yes, please give details.
Auckland Transport does not currently use ANPR. There is a plan to use ANPR for
non-enforcement purposes i.e. to track real-time journey times and routes for
vehicles through the major corridors. This will assist planners to determine if vehicles
are travelling through the city, staying in the city, times people travel in and out of the
city and the routes they use.
The proposed solution design would be that license plates would be read by the
camera and would then be encrypted so that it could not be read or recognised, there
would also be no association to personal records i.e. through the Motor Vehicle
Register. The license plate would never be written to a database or stored in any way
any images of the vehicle would also be deleted. When the license plate was seen
again by another camera it would relate it to the encrypted identifier created earlier
and again not write the license plate to a database of any sort.
Should the license plate then not be seen again for a defined period of time, or on the
specified cameras configured to complete the activity the records would be deleted
and only the aggregated metadata associated to the individual journey would be
registered with no association to the vehicle that completed the journey.
At present this is a proposed solution and needs to be tested and then a decision
made whether to implement or not.
Another proposal that will be considered in the future is the possibility of identifying
via ANPR against a list of pre-registered plates details of individual vehicles. These
would occur at the request of an individual where there is a desire to receive updates
based on any potential interruptions to someone’s journey i.e. a person’s car may be
recognised going on the motorway and they receive an update through their desired
channel that there is an incident further along their journey and they may wish to
seek alternative routes.
3. Does Auckland Transport currently use or plan to use any system to track
individual people or vehicles (excluding people and vehicles that work for
Auckland Transport)? If yes, please give details.
Auckland Transport does not currently use ANPR. There is a plan to use ANPR for
non-enforcement purposes i.e. to track real-time journey times for cars through the
major corridors. The proposed solution design would likely be that license plates
would be read by the camera and would then be encrypted so that it could not be
read or recognised, there would also be no association to personal records i.e.
through the Motor Vehicle Register. The license plate
would never be written to a
database or stored in any way, any images of the vehicle would also be deleted.
When the license plate was seen again by another camera it would relate it to the
encrypted identifier created earlier and again not write the license plate to a database
of any sort.
Should the license plate then not be seen again for a period of time, or on the
specified cameras configured to complete the activity the records would be deleted
and only the metadata associated to the individual journey would be registered with
no association to the vehicle that completed the journey.
The tracking of individual vehicles may occur at the request of an individual where
there is a desire to receive updates based on any potential interruptions to
someone’s journey i.e. a person car maybe recognised going on the motorway and
they receive an update through their desired channel that there is an incident further
along their journey and they may wish to seek alternative routes.
4. Does Auckland Transport currently store or plan to store any significant
quantities of personally identifiable information within systems that are not
physically located in New Zealand? If yes, please list the systems and the type
and volume of data. Please feel free to exclude trivial information stores such
as a single Gmail account, etc.
No, Auckland Transport does not currently, and has not plan or intention to store, any
quantities of personally identifiable information within systems that are not physically
located in NZ. All CCTV details and data will be stored at a secure data centre in the
Auckland region
.
5. Does Auckland Transport currently use or plan to use any form of automated
surveillance of Facebook, Twitter or other social media. If yes, please give
details. (Please feel free to exclude the systems used by your comms/PR
team.)
Auckland Transport has trialled automatic monitoring of several Auckland Transport
Twitter feeds to identify key works, as is common practice for most large
organisations. From this it obtains sentiment analysis of the company.
Social media channels are a key customer service channel and monitoring of this
channel to the purposes of monitoring the Auckland Transport networks for incidents
to ensure a better customer experience has also been trialled and will continue to be
developed as on online interactive customer channel.
6. Does Auckland Transport currently allow or plan to allow any other agency
(such as the Police) to control any part of the system to target surveillance for
the purpose of their own investigations? If yes, please give details.
The NZ Police only has view access to NZ Police Cameras (documented in the
Memorandum of understanding between AT and NZ Police) to support and assist the
NZ Police in law enforcement activities, including management of public safety
incidents. The NZ Police may be given access to view and to the data of other assets
with the approval of Auckland Transport for the purposes of law enforcement and
public safety and incident management. The NZ Police's use of any data will be
governed by the Privacy Act.
We trust this information has addressed the matters raised however you have the right in
accordance with section 27(3) of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings
Act 1987 (LGOIMA) to make a complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman if you are not
satisfied with our response.
Kind regards,
Roger Jones
General Manager – Business Technology Division
