Security filming is common in Australia and not outlawed by this ruling. It is specifically the non-discriminate use of facial recognition technology this ruling applies to.

The specific difference is "sensitive information". General filming with manual review isn't considered to be collecting privacy sensitive information. Automatic facial recognition is.

The blog post makes this point about how the law is applied:

> Is this a technology of convenience - is it being used only because it’s cheaper, or as an alternative to employing staff to do a particular role, and are there other less privacy-intrusive means that could be reasonably used?

https://www.oaic.gov.au/news/blog/is-there-a-place-for-facia...

I don't really understand their reasoning behind the "technology of convenience" point.

Say I implement facial recognition anti-fraud via an army of super-recognizers sitting in an office, watching the camera feeds all day (collecting the sensitive information into their brains rather than into a computer system). It'd be more expensive and involve employing staff (both the "technology of convenience" criteria. From a consumer perspective the privacy impact is very similar, but somehow the privacy commissioner would interpret this differently?

Maybe that is the point the privacy commissioner is trying to make, that collecting this information through an automated computer system is fundamentally different than collecting this information through an analog/human system. But I'm not sure the line is really so clear...