One Nation WA is sounding the alarm after media has confirmed WA Police has set up a Chinese style surveillance state data harvesting system.

In China citizens are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, at home, at work and when they are out in public. This monitoring is done via huge amounts of facial recognition cameras, the storing of all personal internet usage data and mobile phone data which contains information about what movements people make. All of this data is then stored forever in huge databases, which use artificial intelligence systems to identify what the communist party considers to be undesirable, and issue social credit scores to citizens to influence their behaviour.

In China the official propaganda extolls the virtues of this dystopian system, pointing out that crime and bad behaviour are being very effectively managed. Of course they have a point, just like in George Orwell's book 1984, a system of total control where the state can control the thoughts and actions of individuals is very effective.

Western Australians will think that the Chinese system could never be implemented here, however we are only missing one part of it, and that is formalised social credit scores. WA Police already gather all data created in WA, internet searches, mobile phone records, surveillance and road traffic cameras, and government health records, and all of this data is stored forever, and analysed using AI.

Even the WA Police commissioner has realised this level of data harvesting could be unethical, as he has announced an ethics committee will be established to ensure the system is not used in dangerous ways. But of course the committee will be staffed by Government appointees, so this will obviously provide no real protections as future governments can just appoint the people they control when they want to.

The erosion of our democratic principles of free speech, freedom of association and privacy are under significant attack by the major parties, they have already built the infrastructure for authoritarian tyranny to be implemented at the flick of a switch.

One Nation WA is committed to putting an end to this attack on our values and culture, we reject a digital surveillance state, and note that those who give up essential liberties for temporary security, will end up with neither liberty or security.

This is why it is so important that One Nation WA is well represented in the WA Parliament after the next election, the people of WA can count on us to hold the major parties to account, and to defend our common democratic values.