Surveillance in public places can be considered an invasion of privacy, but it could also be used to find lost children, track down persons of interest or provide data to retailers.
Speaking at the annual Safe Cities Conference in Brisbane on Wednesday, Advanced Surveillance Group director Professor Brian Lovell said surveillance was very Big Brother, and unashamedly so.
Professor Lovell said the 2005 London bombings led former prime minister John Howard to recognise the value of surveillance.
"He started up some programs for research and I got an inaugural funding from that and got some follow-up funding ... that's how I got into this area," Professor Lovell said.
Face-recognition technology was already used at airports in Australia and around the world with SmartGate technology, but Professor Lovell said those systems were incredibly expensive and would only work with co-operative people.
He said he wanted to implement the technology in situations where people didn't know they were being photographed.
Some of Professor Lovell's previous work included mobile face recognition that he said was originally designed for Queensland Police to identify members of outlaw motorcycle gangs.
"It didn't get rolled out, but that's what it was built for – street checking for police."
Facial recognition technology has also been used in retail to monitor who was looking at advertising billboards in New York's Times Square and in Chicago, as well as monitoring the ages and genders of those entering retail stores.
He said he had a keen interest in how it could be used to make cities safer.
"We've got these face recognition appliances, but how do we connect up hundreds of thousands of these things ... you want to have them in every 7-Eleven store, every Myer, Coles, Woolworths," Professor Lovell said.
"If you're looking for a certain person you want to know where they are.
From here we plan to connect up a network of pubs and clubs, fine-tune this and the idea is to connect it up across a whole lot of RSLs.
Professor Brian Lovell
"It doesn't have to be master criminals, it could be lost children in shopping centres."
Professor Lovell said the current problems with existing CCTV networks where they were often in the wrong spots, produced large data rates and were therefore extremely costly.
He said he believed the latest developments in facial recognition could improve privacy, cut costs and be used in day-to-day operations.
In 2016, Professor Lovell tested the software in shopping centres in Brazil during the Olympics, but the cameras were set to maximum range and people did not look at the cameras.
The cameras have since been refined and rolled out on a trial basis at Brothers Leagues Club in Ipswich.
Professor Lovell said he believed facial recognition software could be used in pubs and clubs to identify patrons and would be more economical than using a security guard to identify patrons.
"From here we plan to connect up a network of pubs and clubs, fine-tune this and the idea is to connect it up across a whole lot of RSLs.
"We have also done installation in banks for access control ... you get an audit trail for anyone that comes through into a secure financial facility."
Hospitals had also shown interest, he said.
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