Australian law explicitly allows computers to make important decisions previously made by the ministers or staff of at least 11 federal government departments. This has been going on since at least 2001, well before the age of algorithms, and yet there remains little clarity about exactly what decisions are being entrusted to the computers. As best we can tell, the first legislation allowing computers to automatically make important decisions with real impact on people's lives was the Social Security (Administration) Act -- which also happens to be the critical piece of legislation that allowed the most high-profile and controversial automated government program so far, Centrelink's'robodebt' endeavour. The legislation giving computers decision-making power over social security is very short and, as these things go, easy to understand. It was introduced in 2001 along with a slew of other provisions around debt recovery.

Australia's international airports are in the process of automating 90 percent of air traveler processing by 2020 by implementing facial recognition technology that involves biometric recognition of faces, irises and/or fingerprints, hence eliminating the need to carry essential traveling documents such as passports. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection, while building on the Seamless Traveller initiative announced in 2015, said Sunday that it will make a transition toward a "contactless" system for arrivals this year, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Under the new system, manned counters will be replaced by automatic electronic booths and the existing SmartGate that scan passports electronically will also be overhauled. Before introducing it to a major airport (scheduled for November), the program is to be piloted in July at Canberra Airport where international flight operations are limited to New Zealand and Singapore. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection is scheduled to implement the technology in all major airports by March 2019.

Australia's descent into a federal government-backed biometric future began on Wednesday, with the first three agencies to be on board the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Australian Federal Police (AFP), and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP). The first tranche of data to be swapped by the new Face Verification Service will be citizenship images, with visa, passport, and driver licence photos to follow. In August last year, the Attorney-General's Department (AGD) said access would be expanded to include the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Defence, and the AGD. Clear-cut definition of de-identified data critical in legislation: Pilgrim Department of Finance to rebuild two-year-old IT system Turnbull's DTA to establish a whole-of-government program management office Vodafone continues losing customers as Telstra, Optus, Amaysim gain: Kantar The AU$18.5 million system is designed to replace existing manual, ad-hoc facial image sharing arrangements between agencies to verify identities, and avoids the creation of a centralised database by agencies receiving queries running image searches against their own databases, an AGD fact sheet [PDF] claims. "Often, this response will be a simple'yes' or'no' to indicate whether two images are of the same person," AGD said.