2 million Kiwis Have Police Alert on Their Names
April 15th, 2019Via: New Zealand Herald:
Nearly two million people appear in a New Zealand police intelligence system with an alert against their name, inquiries by the Otago Daily Times have revealed. Those in the database are generally flagged without their knowledge, and a leading security analyst says the broad sweep of the system raises privacy concerns. George Block reports.
Has your driver’s licence ever been cancelled? Vetted by police recently? Do you have a firearms licence?
Then chances are you appear in the police National Intelligence Application (NIA) with at least one alert against your name.
Police can apply 126 different “person alerts”, including flags for firearms licence holders, people known by police to be HIV (AIDS) positive, and alerts for paedophiles and convicted murderers.
This all adds up: 1,988,963 people in New Zealand have at least one alert against their name – just over 40 per cent of the population at an average of 1.7 alerts per person, according to figures obtained under the Official Information Act by the Otago Daily Times.
Research Credit: WS
