Government to scan ID of Geelong taxi passengers

Transport minister Terry Mulder today announced that $300,000 would be spent to enahnce taxi ranks in eight Melbourne councils. In addition to improving safety, taxi ranks in Glenelg, Stonnington, Manningham, Mitchell, Baw Baw, Warrnambool, Geelong and Wodonga, would receive new seating, signange and pedestrian barriers.

ID scanning technology has been earmarked for Geelong, where Mr Mulder said taxi rank "marshals" would use portable equipment to record taxi and passenger details electronically.

"This makes it safer for everyone," Mr Mulder said.

However, Darren Palmer, associate professor in Criminology at Deakin University, said that using the ID scanners could breach three of the Australian privacy principles. This includes the prohibition on the collection of personal information unless it's necessary; prohibition requiring an individual to provide a unique identifier; and allowing an individual the ability to transact anonymously, where this is lawful.

On their own, he said, ID scanners won't guarantee passenger safety.

"Tech can be an aid... but the key elements of a safe taxi rank goes beyond the tech -- it's about the people," said Mr Palmer. "They need proper training, accountability, payment, etc, and if you don't get that right, you open yourself up to a lot of problems that the ID scanners won't overcome."

"The quality of the personnel operating the system, on-the-ground, getting people into the queues and making sure they're behaving, it's crucial they're high quality people able to manage that environment without escalating that situation."

Community opposition buried a similar proposal in Geelong in 2009, he said.

Since then excessive violence in night-time entertainment precincts, including in Geelong and Sydney's Kings Cross, has seen the ID scanner emerge as an increasingly popular measure to preserve safety.

In the study, ID scanners in the night-time economy: social sorting or social order? Mr Palmer, Ian Warren and Peter Miller found that even after the ID scanners were introduced in Geelong, nighttime violence persisted.

Patrons raising privacy issues were told to go to another pub, Mr Warren said.

"This has led to a cultural attitude where people won't question," Mr Warren said. "They've just accepted it.

"We do have strong evidence that the protocols are left to the trust of the administrators of the data, which is usually left on site. There's a lot of trust associated with this which we think is problematic."

Mr Palmer said we need to have a big-picture discussion about the accountability framework that is built around the databases that are increasingly being created to catalogue our everyday behaviours.