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Concerns have been raised about the privacy of Australians following a plan by the government to set up a potentially invasive facial recognition database.
The government has planned to spend up to 13.5 billion U.S. dollars on the database which includes a National Facial Biometric Matching Capability.
But an independent, government-commissioned assessment into The Capability has warned that it could inadvertently collect a lot more information than deemed necessary - putting personal details and data at risk.
Conditionally approved, The Capability would give the police the right to up to 100 million facial images, lifted from drivers' licences, passports and even Facebook accounts.
The government has said it would greatly assist authorities in tackling cross-border crime, but leading privacy campaigner David Vaile from the Australian Privacy Foundation told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Thursday that The Capability was a concern for Australians.
"Biometrics, unlike any other form of identification, is tied to your biological existence, which has some benefits for its use as an identifier but it has the great downside that if something goes wrong, if it's breached, if it's hacked, it can't be revoked, " Vaile said.
"Basically if anybody manages to get this, they breach the security, potentially you're compromised for life."
Meanwhile federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan said the government had taken on board the majority of the 16 recommendations mentioned in the assessment.
He said it was just the first consultation process in implementing the database, with a number of finer details to be finetuned before it is switched on.
The Capability is expected to come online by mid-2016.
