`The services enabled by the legislation are not intended to
provide agencies with mass surveillance capabilities. Indeed, the
technical design of the system could not facilitate this ... as it
requires users to input a single still image at a time to conduct
a query,` Acting First Assistant Secretary at Home Affairs`
Identity and Biometrics Division Andrew Rice told the committee on
Friday, ahead of the departmental leadership change.
`It can`t be connected directly to a live CCTV feed. Even if the
agencies attempted to circumvent this by conducting multiple
queries in close succession, the way the service operates makes it
implausible that agencies could do this to support real-time
identification of multiple individuals within a crowd, for
example.`
The comments were made following an appearance in front of the
same committee earlier that day by Human Rights Law Centre
executive director Hugh de Kretser, who raised concerns over the
ability of agencies to have real-time surveillance of crowds of
people `going about their business, going about their daily lives,
and scan faces to merge contemporaneously or almost
contemporaneously with a database of images`.
The committee was specifically reviewing the Identity-matching
Services Bill 2018 and the Australian Passports Amendment
(Identity-matching Services) Bill 2018, which were introduced by
the Australian government in February to allow for the creation of
a system to match photos against identities of citizens stored in
various federal and state agencies.
The Australia-wide identity-matching initiative will allow state
and territory law-enforcement agencies to have access to the
country`s new face-matching services to access passport, visa,
citizenship, and driver licence images from other jurisdictions.
The Face Verification Service (FVS) is a one-to-one image-based
verification service that will match a person`s photo against an
image on one of their government records; while the Face
Identification Service (FIS) is a one-to-many, image-based
identification service that can match a photo of an unknown person
against multiple government records to help establish their
identity.
`Face identification service users will receive a gallery of
possible matches in response to each query they submit. The system
does not provide a single confirmed match. It is then up to users
with appropriate facial-recognition training to consider the
gallery of possible matches returned by the system and select a
short

list for further investigation,` Rice explained on Friday.
`Only at that point does the agency receive biographic information
about the short-listed candidates -- the final identity solution
decision still needs to be made by the user agency.`
He said the system has been specifically designed in such a way as
to ensure there is always a person in the loop in FIS
transactions.
`The system is designed not to rely solely on the technology for
identity resolution decisions,` he continued.
`We need to make sure -- and this is what we`re doing with the
jurisdictions and with agencies that will be prescribed under the
Bill -- to put in place a training regime to make sure that the
officers who access the service have got the right skills,
encouraging agencies ... to think about the face identification
service as being a specialist capability that a small group of
people do and do all the time. That`s what happens in our
department at the moment. The face resolution staff are a small
team, and that`s all they do. It`s about putting in the range of
controls to deal with the fact that, because of the very nature of
biometrics, there will be some probabilistic anomalies that have
to be sorted out.`
Facing the same committee in May, Rice said the department had
purchased a facial recognition algorithm from a vendor to be used
for the FIS, however Home Affairs received immunity from
disclosing who the contract was awarded to, citing mostly security
concerns.
`The FIS enlivens significantly a threat to assumed identities, so
that`s security and law enforcement covert operatives and
witnesses under protection, so we received an exemption under the
Commonwealth procurement rules to not publish the identity, the
name of the vendor that`s providing the facial recognition
service,` Rice said at the time.
`It`s just reducing the potential vectors of attack.`
Rice told the joint committee that as all of the vendors providing
biometric or facial recognition services use different algorithms,
naming the vendor employed would potentially increase the threat
of attack.
On Friday, he held firm on the department`s position, saying
knowing which vendor it is gives the potential for some kind of
intrusion against that company in order to gain access to
information relating to the algorithm. V.2763

I recently renewed my passport at Home Affairs in a bank branch and was very impressed with the service and quick turnaround time. The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and major banks first launched the option to do Smart ID card and passport applications via select bank branches in 2016. It has slowly grown to around 30 locations, including branches from Absa, Discovery Bank, FNB, Investec, Nedbank, and Standard Bank. My passport was set to expire in October 2024, and because many countries require that your passport be valid for six months from a travel date, a renewal was due. V.5324
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DA MP says this is up 20 000 from the 74 000 six months previously Department of Home Affairs visa backlog is up by 20 000 in 6 months The Democratic Alliance (DA) can reveal that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) Visa backlog has increased from 74 000 in August 2023 to 92 000 as of 16 February 2024. This is an increase of just under 20 000 in about 6 months. Download the Parliamentary question and answer here. The increase goes against what the Minister told the Home Affairs Parliamentary Committee in March 2023. V.5325
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The European Union (EU) will limit visas for people from Ethiopia. This is because the Ethiopian government hasn`t been helping take back citizens who stay in the EU illegally. The EU Council announced this in a statement on Monday. Ethiopians won`t get visas for multiple entries anymore. Also, Ethiopians with diplomatic and service passports won`t have their visa fees waived. V.5326
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CRIMINAL convictions more than two decades ago came to haunt a man who was offered a job as a senior data discovery and enrichment expert, but after his prospective employer got wind of the convictions, retracted the job offer. But the Gqeberha Labour Court came to his rescue and found that the man should be given a second chance, given that his convictions occurred 20 years ago and had meanwhile been expunged. V.5327
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Nigeria’s economy, which ranked as Africa’s largest in 2022, is set to slip to fourth place this year and Egypt, which held the top position in 2023, is projected to fall to second behind South Africa after a series of currency devaluations, International Monetary Fund forecasts show. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook estimates Nigeria’s gross domestic product at $253 billion based on current prices this year, lagging energy-rich Algeria at $267 billion, Egypt at $348 billion and South Africa at $373 billion. V.5328
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There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers. V.5318
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An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail.Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells. V.5320
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EREMY MAGGS: I want to stay with crime now. Individuals with a criminal record may be faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, I think that’s a given. Here in South Africa, employers may legally exclude an applicant from consideration for a position if having a clean criminal record is what is termed an inherent requirement of the job. That phrase, inherent requirement, is important, but what exactly does that mean, and when can an applicant be lawfully excluded for having a criminal record? V.5321
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As a South African who has adopted a nomadic work lifestyle alongside my wife, Ingrid Lotze, I’ve been an interested observer of South Africa’s snail-pace digital nomad visa (DNV) development process. Despite the optimism surrounding its introduction, the visa seems to miss several crucial marks for digital nomads like us. V.5322
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DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
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