About the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties

1. The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (‘the Council’) is a voluntary, not-for-profit organisation founded in 1952 which advocates to promote human rights and maintain civil liberties.
   
   
2. We wish to make an oral submission to the Committee.

Introduction

3. The Land Transport (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill provides a legal framework for charging additional fees to people who use congested roads at times when those roads are congested. It also appears to be the enabling framework legislation for a future shift in how roads are funded.
   
   
4. The Council has no position on the focus of the bill, but the congestion charging schemes, although technology agnostic, will initially rely upon cameras capturing images of people’s cars, and the bill enables this information to be accessed by the police. As a result, a policy tool that the public should have confidence in will instead become another instrument of tracking and surveilling them. The Council strongly opposes the system of mass surveillance which the government intends to create as a side effect of implementing the bill.
   
   
5. For decades Parliament has chipped away at our privacy and other civil liberties. Increasing amounts of information on us and our movements can be accessed by the police and other government agencies. We can all see the dangers of this data aggregation and loss of privacy increasing state powers and reducing our liberties. In the USA, a country which has weak privacy laws, the aggregation of data and surveillance is being used to kidnap innocent people and send them to foreign gulags. In Aotearoa, we seem to be asleep at the wheel as our privacy, freedom of movement and freedom of association are eroded. We have already weakened our privacy protections and enabled police access to numerous privately run surveillance systems. Instead of slowing the rate of erosion, we need to stop all erosion and urgently start restoring our liberties. 

Data gathered can be shared with other government agencies

6. To operate a congestion charging scheme, the authority running the scheme (a ‘scheme board’) must collect data about the vehicles entering the designated area. The only agency that needs that data for the scheme to operate is the scheme board. Enforcement authorities do not need the data – they only need to be able to rely upon the accuracy of the scheme board’s assertion that a charge is payable.
   
   
7. Data collected by scheme boards in order to operate a congestion charging scheme can also be collected by both the New Zealand Transport Agency (the Agency) and the Police. This can be seen from the new sections that clause 4 of the bill inserts into the Land Transport Management Act 2003. New section 65A defines ‘enforcement authority’ as including the Agency, the Police, and any local authorities that are specified in an Order in Council made under section 65H as being an enforcement authority.
   
   
8. The collected data enables congestion charging, but it also establishes facts about people’s locations at a point in time that can be collated and used to track their movements.
   
   
9. At the heart of the Council’s concerns with the bill is that the data can then be shared with the police or intelligence agencies. This is an attack on people’s privacy as they exercise their right to freedom of movement under section 18 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.¹
   
   
10. Clause 4 of the bill inserts new section 65ZF of the bill, which provides the illusion of protecting privacy. Under 65ZF(1), the scheme board or enforcement agency can only use personal information collected for collecting time of use charges. This is a simple repetition of the Privacy Act 2020’s Information Privacy Principle (IPP) 10(1)(A) “that the purpose for which the information is to be used is directly related to the purpose in connection with which the information was obtained”. ²
    
    
11. However, as the Council has maintained throughout, the privacy safeguards in the Privacy Act 2020 are inadequate. The police can bypass the Privacy Act at their discretion thanks to IPP 11(1)(e) “that the disclosure of the information is necessary to avoid prejudice to the maintenance of the law”. This can be done “by any public sector agency”. The government may say that this provision is necessary because of IPP 11(1)(e)(ii) and (iii), which means that data can be disclosed “for the enforcement of a law that imposes a pecuniary penalty” and for “the protection of public revenue”. But as we have noted in paragraph 6 above, the police and NZTA do not need this information to perform their functions if they know they can rely upon the scheme board’s assertion that the image data shows a payment is due.
    
    
12. “Our” spy agencies can bypass the Privacy Act at their discretion thanks to IPP 11(1)(g) “disclosure of the information is necessary to enable an intelligence and security agency to perform any of its functions”.

Foreign comparisons

Singapore

13. Singapore is often held up as the poster child for congestion charging. We can see from their example that should we implement a system of mass surveillance, that surveillance is a slippery slope which will almost certainly expand. In a 2016, their Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law said:³

The Home Team will use all intelligence and investigation tools available and make better use of available data. For example, public transport video cameras, Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system, these contain important data that can be vital for our safety and security. We had initially taken the position that some of these data would not be used and have said so in Parliament. I think Mr Mah Bow Tan and Dr Yaacob Ibrahim have all said that in the past. But the changed security environment means that we have to change the position on not using such data. And I wish to state that clearly here, since it is a change from what we have said previously in Parliament. In this changed security environment, the Home Team must be able to collect and analyse suspicious travel patterns, and respond swiftly and decisively for our collective security. [emphasis added]

London

14. In January 2015, the Mayor of London instructed Transport for London (TfL) to give the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) direct real-time access to all of the automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras used for enforcing the congestion charge scheme in London.⁴ The Metropolitan Police’s own Privacy Impact Assessment, stated that the “ANPR impacts significantly on the privacy of Londoners who use the road network.” and that their usage of ANPR data could dissuade people from protesting.⁵ By allowing New Zealand’s police access to similar data this bill will also cause these harms. Members of the committee should ask themselves if legislation to enable road user charges should be permitted to chill New Zealanders’ exercise of their rights to freedom of association, movement, peaceful assembly and expression.
     
    
15. We should also note that Metropolitan Police access caused expansion to TfL’s ANPR, increasing both costs and harms. TfL’s said that ANPR data would only be retained for 30 days. Once the Police gained access, retention changed to a year, and more when “specifically requested and preserved as part of an investigation or prosecution.”⁶ 
    
    
16. Finally, we should note that London implemented data collection safeguards which are absent from our bill. For example, ANPR images received by MPS are intentionally reduced in resolution from the higher quality images collected by TfL, down to 3KB or 120 x 60 pixels.⁷ There is no such protection in the bill, which means that there does not appear to be any restriction on sharing and re-use of the full high-resolution images captured by cameras in New Zealand. In light of existing police access to privately captured images, and subsequent application of facial recognition software, the Council is deeply concerned that the NZ police could use the data gathered to track the movements of people walking along the pavements beside vehicles, and discern the identity of passengers as well as drivers of the vehicles. This is another reason why the bill is dangerous and why it must be amended to remove the sharing under IPP 11 of data collected by scheme boards.

Stockholm

17. In contrast with the poor approaches to privacy in the preceding examples, Stockholm has some useful privacy controls for its congestion pricing.⁸ Of note, the collected images are cropped to only show the license plate and they are deleted automatically after the fee is paid The collected information is not available to third parties or the police, and is only used for the congestion charging system.

As is the case in London, Stockholm’s congestion pricing program relies on cameras. When a vehicle passes one of 18 control points around the city, cameras equipped with ALPR photograph the vehicle’s license plate. Stockholm’s system uses cameras only at the congestion-zone entry and exit points, and does not collect information as vehicles drive within the zone. The images collected at the control points are cropped to show only a vehicle’s license plate and the cropped images are encrypted and sent, along with information regarding the location, time, and date the image was captured, to the Swedish Transport Authority (“STA”) for vehicle identification. At the end of each month, the STA sends a monthly invoice to owners of vehicles registered in Sweden. The data collected through Stockholm’s congestion pricing system is retained until approximately three to four months after the applicable fee is paid, at which time the data is deleted (though data may be retained longer in the event of a fee dispute or complaint).

Vehicle-specific data retained in Stockholm’s system may not be routinely accessed. For example, images and information collected about a particular vehicle are not typically reviewed unless there is a dispute or complaint regarding a fee. Nor is such information generally accessible by third parties, including the police. Although it is technically possible that data collected through Stockholm’s congestion pricing program could be used to track driver movements, there are strict laws in Sweden that limit the type of data that can be retrieved from the system and the circumstances under which such data can be accessed.

United States of America

18. While not congestion charging, the American E-ZPass system of RFID transponders for toll collection has the same privacy problems.⁹
    1. In 2007 the Associated Press found that agencies in seven out of twelve states released E-ZPass records in response to both criminal and civil cases, which would include divorce cases.¹⁰
    2. In 2015 the governor of New Jersey, released the tollbooth data of a political opponent.¹¹
       
19. In other words, data gathered for paying a road toll was shared and re-used for divorce proceedings and in a political attack, as well as for other civil cases. This supports the adage that if you collect and store data, agencies and others will seek to access and use it. The safest way to prevent that is to not retain the data for any longer than is necessary to issue the payment notice.

Automated Number Plate Recognition in Aotearoa

20. To make the scale of the issue clear we can compare it to the ANPR system where police make almost 700,000 requests a year for ANPR data.¹² The entire process of justifying each access is checking a box on a webform saying that the data is needed for the maintenance of law. Given the very high volume, there’s obviously no consideration of the merit of the requests by the agencies to whom the data has been entrusted. Successive governments in Aotearoa have a record of discarding our privacy carelessly.
    
    
21. The police’s use of ANPR data demonstrates a weak-to-non-existent culture of self-restraint, as does their reuse of surveillance video from retail locations. We are concerned that the congestion charging scheme will end up as another building block towards mass surveillance through the digital panopticon.

Privacy Commissioner’s Statements in the Departmental Disclosure Statement

22. The Privacy Commissioner’s statements in section 3.5.1 of the Departmental Disclosure Statement (DDS) are of great concern so we quote them here in their entirety.

Despite the RIS identifying privacy as a key issue in this policy process, we were not included in earlier policy development or in departmental consultation on the Cabinet paper as required in the Cabinet Manual. We are now responding to a draft Bill which reflects earlier policy decisions on a short timeframe. While we aim to provide helpful comments below, we will likely have further issues to engage on at the Select Committee stage.

Overall, we think the policy approach would benefit from further analysis of potential privacy risks and specific steps that could be taken to mitigate these risks. We think there is still an opportunity to address these privacy risks in the development of the Bill, and that investing in privacy analysis would help to support the intended outcomes and uphold social licence for the approach ultimately adopted.

We welcome the explicit limit on the purpose for which personal information can be used under new s 65ZG.¹³

The Bill proposes new legal powers to allow for road pricing schemes. In our view, the very serious privacy impacts which could result should be considered and reflected in the scope of these powers. We strongly encourage MoT and decision makers to consider how privacy might be built into this framework.

We recommend that a statutory consultation with the Privacy Commissioner be included as a requirement in the Bill.

23. The Council draws the Committee’s attention to two portions of the Privacy Commissioner’s statement. First, once again government officials have chosen to sabotage public confidence in government and good regulation by not consulting with the appropriate parties during policy development and before drafting a bill, and then made that error worse by imposing false urgency. (It is no wonder opinion polls show public trust in government is falling.)¹⁴
    
    
24. Second, it is unclear if the privacy protections in the bill have been strengthened as the Privacy Commissioner recommended. It seems unlikely, as the bill does not include a statutory requirement to consult with the Privacy Commissioner, as the Privacy Commissioner recommended. The Council regards the insertion of a duty to consult with the Commissioner as wholly insufficient, since it does not prevent the retention and sharing for re-use of the data that we and the committee should be concerned about.

The Cabinet Paper envisages nationwide surveillance

25. The Council is also deeply concerned by information contained in the Cabinet paper on the bill. The Cabinet paper acknowledges that the public will be concerned about vehicle tracking in paragraph 25. This paragraph also considers various technologies for vehicle tracking:

While in-vehicle global positioning and cellular technology (GNSS) already exists that could facilitate time of use charging, its adoption is likely to take some time in view of public concerns about vehicle tracking. All overseas jurisdictions with congestion charging currently use road-side infrastructure (such as gantries on multi-lane roads and poles on two lane roads) in combination with automatic number plate recognition or in-vehicle transponders detected using short-range radio technology (RFID). [emphasis added]

26. However, the Cabinet paper goes on to say in paras 26 and 27 that: 

I expect that initial schemes will not utilise GNSS technology, but over time there will be opportunities to explore more sophisticated approaches to collection and operation, consistent with the direction of the revenue work programme and fleet-wide transition to road user charges. When this happens, local variable charging schemes, such as time of use charging and tolling, will be incorporated into national variable charging using technology likely to be adopted as we modernise the road user charging system.

I propose that the legislation we progress is technology-agnostic to accommodate ongoing technological developments.. However, it will still be important that scheme design captures economies of scale in data collection and billing, which should be integral to the framework. [emphasis added]

27. Decoding the public service jargon, what these paragraphs indicate is a policy intention, enabled by this bill, to extend this privacy-infringing method from local congestion charging schemes to national road-user charging.
    
    
28. This indicates that what MPs are considering today are not just proposals to enable congestion charging in limited areas, but a wholesale shift to how drivers pay to support the road network. Again, the Council has no view on the merits of congestion charging, but we are deeply concerned by a move to a system that is underpinned by a method that enables surveillance and tracking of people’s movements. It is clear from the Cabinet paper that the government knows this, even if the implications of this shift in revenue model are not being highlighted to MPs and the public. While Ministry of Transport officials may protest that their intention is not to establish the basis of a system of mass surveillance, the Committee should discount such protests. It is only possible to believe the government has benign intentions in this area if it is willing to amend this bill to safeguard people’s privacy. 

Protecting our Privacy

29. The Privacy Act is not sufficient to protect us from this sort of automated access to large scale databases of private information. No one in Parliament championed the Privacy Act as a step toward large-scale, automated access to our private information by police and spy agencies. Government agencies and commercial companies are under no legal obligation to release the data to Police and spies, yet they seem all too willing to do so.¹⁵
    
    
30. As with ANPR, there’s no oversight in this bill except what the police enforce themselves. The Council appreciates Police’s efforts to behave, but we all know that no one can provide meaningful oversight of their own actions. Furthermore, no agency is providing meaningful oversight of, or restraint on, the Police’s use of these powers in practice.
    
    
31. Instead of importing the worst aspects of failures to protect privacy from overseas – while pretending not to do so in section 65ZF(2) – the Committee should take the opportunity to emulate Stockholm’s approach and show the world that congestion charging can be done in a privacy-protecting manner.
    
    
32. Data minimization should be the highest priority, and should be the overriding principle in the bill. Data which is not collected, or not retained, can not be used to invade our privacy. Either:
    1. The data should deleted after the charging notice is sent, and the loss of appeal rights is legislated as a trade-off to protect privacy; or that
    2. The data is retained only for a week to allow for appeals, but that access by anyone else is explicitly forbidden.
       
33. The Council recommends that new section 65ZF is amended to achieve these policy goals, and to protect the rights of New Zealanders while still enabling congestion charging schemes to function:

Recommendation 1

• Recommendation 1 – In new section 65ZF delete subsection (3) ‘The disclosure of personal information to which this section applies on any of the grounds set out in information privacy principle 11 set out in section 22 of the Privacy Act 2020 is not prohibited by subsection (2).’

34. This would enable the purported privacy protections of new section 65ZF to function, without enabling data sharing and re-use by either the scheme boards or enforcement authorities (the police, NZTA and any other local authorities designated by Order in Council).
    
    
35. However, we are concerned by 65ZF(5)(c) that permits retention as required by other laws. This seems vague and open to abuse. Simply stating the limits to which the data is subject, and on its retention is insufficient. The Council believes the government and MPs need to demonstrate the seriousness of their concern for protecting people’s rights by specifying both a hard time limit for the retention period, and by creating an offence for mis-use of the data contrary to the purposes listed in new section 65ZF. 

Recommendations 2-4

• Recommendation 2 – In new section 65ZF delete paragraph 65ZF(5)(c).
• Recommendation 3 – After section 65ZF(5) insert a new subsection that states ‘All personal information held for the purposes of this section must be deleted no later than 30 days after it was collected.’
• Recommendation 4 – Insert a new section after 65ZF ‘Offences’, which states that a person commits an offence if (a) use of any of the personal information referred to in section 65ZF is made for purposes other than collecting time of use charges and enforcing this subpart; (b) the data is retained for more than 30 days; and (c) any of the personal information referred to in s 65ZF is shared with any other person or organisation other than those permitted by that section to hold the data is an offence; and that the penalty for such an offence is a fine of $20,000.

36. The Council further recommends that given the seriousness of the threat to our liberties, that further safeguards are required. Even if data is minimized, we believe that there needs to be independent oversight of police data access to ensure that it is consistent with a free and democratic society. The Council recommends that Police, and the intelligence agencies, should have to get a production order from a judge to access information from these databases.
    
    
37. The Council again notes that most agencies are ignoring their reporting obligations under section 171 of the Search and Surveillance Act.¹⁶ The Ministry of Transport has been required to report annually since the Search and Surveillance Act became law in 2012, for their search powers under five acts.¹⁷ The Ministry has never met that requirement. Therefore we urge the Committee to add a restatement of those obligations to this bill, namely that scheme boards will track and publicly report on every request they receive for private data collected under this bill.

Recommendation 5

• Recommendation 5 – Insert a new section after section 65ZF which reproduces the reporting obligations of the Police in section 170 and other agencies in section 171 of the Search and Surveillance Act 2012.

38. This bill is already amending the Land Transport Management Act 2003, so it would be appropriate for this bill to retrofit these safeguards into the existing ANPR system.

Freedom of Information and public participation

39. New sections 65A and 65U define what a scheme board is. However, it appears that scheme boards could be unincorporated associations. It does not appear that scheme boards are defined in such a way as to bring them within the scope of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA), even though they would be constituted under the control of local authorities that are subject to the LGOIMA. It is possible that scheme boards fall within the definition of a ‘committee’ spelled out in paragraph (c) of the section 4 definition of a local authority in LGOIMA, but it seems uncertain and such uncertainty is not helpful.
    
    
40. Paragraph 3.1 of the DDS glibly declares that “There are no international obligations relevant to this Bill”. The Council respectfully disagrees. Our international human rights commitments are always relevant. Those agreements, in particular Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, bind us to have no government functions that are not subject to freedom of information laws.
    
    
41. Similarly, the Ministry of Justice’s advice to the Attorney-General on consistency of the Bill with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act fails to mention that scheme boards have not, but should, be brought within our right to information regime.
    
    
42. The Council has repeatedly brought the inclusion of secrecy clauses that dis-apply the OIA or LGOIMA to the attention of select committees considering legislation. While consultation on this bill was open, the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights sent Aotearoa New Zealand the List of Issues it wants to examine with regard to our compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Paragraph 19 of the List of Issues is a “please explain” why new exceptions to freedom of information law keep being created by Parliament.¹⁸
    
    
43. The failure to include scheme boards within LGOIMA is also contrary to the guidance issued by the Legislation Design Advisory Committee (LDAC). Part 5 of Chapter 20 of the LDAC guidance states that:

All public bodies should be subject to the Ombudsmen Act 1975, the Public Audit Act 2001, the Public Records Act 2005, and the Official Information Act 1982 (or the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987).

The Acts discussed in this section are key mechanisms by which government bodies are held accountable for their activities. They should apply to all new bodies and existing bodies unless there are compelling reasons for them not to. The Ministry of Justice, Te Kawa Mataaho, the department that administers the particular Act, and any agency with operational responsibilities under the particular Act (departments and agencies identified below) should be consulted when considering whether to apply the following Acts to a government body:

– The Ombudsmen Act 1975, the Official Information Act 1982, and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987—The Department of Internal Affairs and the Office of the Ombudsman;

– The Public Audit Act 2001—The Treasury and the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General; and

– The Public Records Act 2005—The Department of Internal Affairs and Archives New Zealand (Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga).

44. Paragraphs 50-58 of the Cabinet paper concern the governance of time-of-use schemes. Although paragraph 53 notes that “Gaining public acceptance of charging will be critical to the success of schemes” no mention is made in this section of bringing scheme boards within LGOIMA, the OIA, the Ombudsmen Act, Public Audit Act or Public Records Act. Perhaps this is because, contrary to the LDAC guidance that the Ministry of Justice and Public Service Commission be consulted, paragraph 89 of the Cabinet paper indicates neither was consulted. Although the paper says that “Strong oversight of the responsible agencies will be essential” (para 67), it proposes that this oversight will only be provided by the Secretary for Transport (and through them to the Minister).
    
    
45. This is clearly inappropriate and out of step with norms of public oversight and access to information in Aotearoa. Furthermore, the Cabinet paper states that:

Gaining public acceptance of charging will be critical to the success of schemes. Meaningful public engagement and effective communications will be an important part of securing this acceptance. Scheme development needs to include a robust phase of public engagement. The engagement needs to be undertaken in a way that gives the public a clear understanding of the design and how it will affect them.

46. The government’s failure to adhere to legislative norms for access to information and public participation in the work of public authorities must be remedied by the Committee. It should require scheme boards to be added to Part 1 of Schedule 1 of LGOIMA.
    
    
47. If community boards, irrigation boards, licensing trusts, conservation boards and even museum trust boards have all been made subject to the open meetings as well as the access to information aspects of LGOIMA, there is no reason why scheme boards should be excluded from that Act, and every reason why they should be included. This will ensure that the public have their normal rights to access information held by local authorities, as well as ensuring that the open meetings requirements of LGOIMA (Part 7 of the Act) also apply to scheme boards. 
    
    
48. Not including the scheme boards under LGOIMA directly will not only undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of scheme boards, it will also create extra work for the relevant local authorities under LGOIMA, for NZTA and the Ministry of Transport under the OIA, and for the Ombudsman as they receive requests and complaints about trying to access information via more circuitous routes. It would be far simpler to add scheme boards to Part 1 of Schedule 1 of LGOIMA.
    
    
49. While the Committee is addressing this failure, it should also follow LDAC guidance and make the scheme boards subject to the Ombudsmen Act, Public Audit Act and Public Records Act.

Recommendations 6-9

• Recommendation 6 – Add a new section 11 which adds ‘enforcement authorities under section 65A of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ to Part 2 of Schedule 1, and ‘scheme boards under section 65U of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ to Part 3 of Schedule 1, of the Ombudsmen Act 1975, in the appropriate alphabetical locations.
• Recommendation 7 – Add a new section 12 which adds ‘enforcement authorities under section 65A of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ and ‘scheme boards under section 65U of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ to Part 1 of Schedule 1, of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1975, in the appropriate alphabetical locations.
• Recommendation 8 – Add a new section 13 which adds ‘enforcement authorities under section 65A of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ and ‘scheme boards under section 65U of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ to Schedule 1, of the Public Audit Act 2001, in the appropriate alphabetical locations.
• Recommendation 9 – Add a new section 14 which adds ‘enforcement authorities under section 65A of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ and ‘scheme boards under section 65U of the Land Transport Management Act 2003’ to section 4 of the Public Records Act 2005, in the appropriate alphabetical locations.

The Bill of Rights Compliance Report

50. The Attorney General issued a compliance report under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA report). The BORA report has an acceptable analysis of the Right to be Presumed Innocent.
    
    
51. However, this BORA report, like so many before it, ignores Freedom of Information. The Attorney General has no power to selectively ignore parts of BORA in their reports. Yet, once again we have a bill with secrecy measures accompanied by a BORA report which does not even acknowledge that BORA section 14 is affected. The Council urges the Committee to ask the Attorney General to re-issue their analysis after considering freedom of information issues under section 14.
    
    
52. The Council also notes, again, that the BORA report was done on a draft not on the final bill, and urges the Committee to ask the Attorney General to update their analysis based on the bill as it is currently written.

Democracy

53. Article 25 of the ICCPR establishes that everyone has the right to live in a functioning democracy. Paragraph (a) of Article 25 states that people have the right “To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives”.
    
    
54. Sections 65V(2),(4), and (5) establish that NZTA has total control over the scheme board by reserving half of the voting rights to Agency appointed representatives, with the casting vote exercised by the Agency appointed head of the board. The scheme boards are therefore not democratic, and because the control is held by appointed officials, it fails to meet the test in Article 25(2) of the ICCPR.
    
    
55. Part seven of the Cabinet paper indicates that the government wants strong oversight of scheme boards and schemes. The method chosen is strong bureaucratic, rather than democratic, control of scheme boards. The Council recommends that new section 65V is amended to guarantee democratic control of scheme boards. This should be done by
    1. ensuring a 75% majority of scheme board membership is from local authorities; and
    2. ensuring the chair of a scheme board must be a representative of a local authority.

Recommendations 10-11

• Recommendation 10 – Amend new section 65V(2) so that it reads “The board members who are representatives of the local authority or local authorities hold 75% of the voting rights in relation to decisions made by the scheme board.” 
• Recommendation 11 – Amend new section 65V(4) so that it reads “The chair of the scheme board must be a representative of a local authority.”

56. The Council thanks members of the Committee for their time and consideration of our submission.

______________________________

1. New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, section 18. https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM225517.html ↩︎
2. Privacy Act 2020, section 22. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0031/latest/LMS23342.html ↩︎
3. https://www.mha.gov.sg/mediaroom/speeches/ministry-of-home-affairs-committee-of-supply-debate-2016—speech-by-mr-k-shanmugam-minister-for-home-affairs-and-minister-for-law/ ↩︎
4. The mayor of London granted access to assist in “the detection and prevention of crime”. The decision in MD1439 was renewed and expanded by MD2977 in 2022. https://www.london.gov.uk/decisions/md1439-delegation-transport-london-tfl-grant-metropolitan-police-service-mps-direct-access and https://www.london.gov.uk/decisions/md2977-delegation-tfl-grant-anprc-data-access-mps ↩︎
5. Page 17 of MPS DPIA for access to TfL ANPR data feed ↩︎
6. https://content.tfl.gov.uk/appendix-2-mps-dpia-anpr-sharing-january-2025.pdf ↩︎
7. Page 11 of MPS DPIA for access to TfL ANPR data feed ↩︎
8. Pages 5-6 of Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (2020, January 15). Congestion Privacy: The Surprising Privacy Toll of New York City. Communityresourcehub. Retrieved 26 April. 2025, from https://communityresourcehub.org/resource/congestion-privacy-the-surprising-privacy-toll-of-new-york-citys-proposed-congestion-pricing-system/ ↩︎
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-ZPass ↩︎
10. https://web.archive.org/web/20131002015157/http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20216302/ ↩︎
11. https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/christie-use-tollbooth-data-and-why-location-privacy-must-be-protected ↩︎
12. Pennington, P. (2025, March 4). Police use number-plate spotting systems more often | RNZ News. RNZ. Retrieved 26 April. 2025, from https://rnz.co.nz/news/national/543625/police-use-number-plate-spotting-systems-more-often ↩︎
13. Note this is now new section 65ZF ↩︎
14. The Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 shows trust in the New Zealand government has fallen to 45%, and the 2022 OECD survey said that only 40% of people ‘struggling to pay their bills’ trust in government. Is political trust ‘in crisis’? It depends. Max Rashbrooke, The Spinoff, 10 April 2025. https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/10-04-2025/is-political-trust-in-crisis-it-depends ↩︎
15. Fisher, D. (2025, January 22). Privacy Commissioner digs into Golriz Ghahraman shopping incident – NZ Herald. NZ Herald. Retrieved 27 April. 2025, from https://nzherald.co.nz/nz/privacy-commissioner-digs-into-golriz-ghahraman-shopping-incident/ATNGPRU6WFAADOR3GUA7HVKVE4/ ↩︎
16. There are 17 central government agencies who are required to report under section 171, in addition to every local government. For central government agencies, Customs and DIA routinely meet the legal minimum. See pages 164-166 of the Customs 2024 Annual report for an example of the legal requirement which is absent from the Ministry of Transport’s reports. https://www.customs.govt.nz/globalassets/documents/corporate-documents/customs-annual-report-2024-digital.pdf ↩︎
17. The acts administered by the Ministry of Transport which require reporting under section 171 of the Search and Surveillance Act are:
    section 80B of the Civil Aviation Act
    section 79V of the Land Transport Act
    section 51 of the Maritime Security Act
    sections 453-457 of the Maritime Transport Act
    section 79 of the Road User Charges Act ↩︎
18. List of issues prior to submission of the seventh periodic report of New Zealand, Human Rights Committee, CCPR/C/NZL/QPR/7, 4 April 2025. https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CCPR%2FC%2FNZL%2FQPR%2F7&Lang=en ↩︎