95bFM Privacy risks of the Policing Amendment Bill
May 29, 2026
Interview by Thomas Malone, adapted by Chloe Porter
Public submissions for the Policing Amendment Bill are currently ongoing, and several concerns have been raised. The changes would allow police to take photos and record videos with lower bars of justification, and would not require them to provide the right to access or deletion.
University of Auckland professor of commercial law, Gehen Gunasekara, spoke to 95bFM’s The Wire to discuss privacy concerns around this new Policing Amendment Bill.
Gunasekara explains that police can now take photos for a much larger range of purposes. The government, however, argues they've always had this power. They claim it was taken away by the courts and privacy regulators, and that this change will restore the original law. “I take exception to that”, says Gunasekera, “I don't agree with that interpretation.” He believes the current laws were working well, and the new amendment only gives police more unnecessary power.
Issues arise as photos taken stay in the police database forever. Gunasekara explains that “this could lead to the person being arrested or perhaps denied a job if the police are asked to vet a person.” The database may not show that the particular person has a conviction, but just that they are in the database. This undermines the principle of ‘innocence until proven guilty’, says Gunasekera.
Gunasekara describes his greatest fear for this bill is its vagueness, with terms such as “integracy of policing” and “intelligence or other lawful purposes" left undefined. Without a specific definition for "intelligence", it becomes “essentially anything that the police think might be of interest to them.” Furthermore, while the existing law allows police to photograph suspects during arrests, the image must be deleted if there is no conviction. In the new amendment bill, there is no such right to deletion.
“I think the bill is overly wide. I’m totally opposed to it.”
Gunasekara calls for strong safeguards if the bill goes ahead: “defining what these things' purposes are, including a right to access and correct that information, and to check that it's been deleted.”
The bill also may have a disproportionate impact on Māori. In 2020, the Independent Police Conduct Authority and the Privacy Commissioner released a report, which found that police were taking tens of thousands of photos of the public, the majority of whom were Māori youth not suspected of a crime.
Gunasekara addresses the lack of Māori consultation in the creation of this bill and points out the “self-fulfilling prophecy” behind overpolicing certain minorities. He explains that when certain groups are surveilled more than others, they're more likely to be detained and convicted simply because they've got more evidence of where those people's movements are.
“Now that offends any sense of decency and any sense of fairness in our legal system, where you are innocent until proven guilty.”
Gunasekara hopes the committee recommends strong safeguards, and that all parties strive to try to understand what the risks were and how to define intelligence.
“I think that all the rights in the Privacy Act should apply. And also, I think that there should be some right to ensure that it's been audited and that images that are no longer relevant are deleted. So I think, you know, there needs to be audit powers, and there needs to be some kind of right to deletion as well.”
While Gunasekara is ultimately not confident in the bill, he does believe the government can make changes to make it more effective.
“I sincerely hope that the committee recommends at least certain safeguards. People need to have the ability to access those images, and not to have broad law enforcement exceptions that allow the police to say: No, we can't tell you what we're doing, or we can't give you access. That's simply not on.”
