Australian security and counter-terrorism: Facebook photos could be taken for use in national biometric database <http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/oct/21/facebook-photos-could-...> The projected national counter-terrorism database could include photos pulled from social media sites, government officials have told Senate estimates Images harvested from social media sites such as Facebook could be part of the latest counter-terrorism measures, the attorney general’s department has confirmed. In September, the justice minister, Michael Keenan, announced that the federal government would spend $18.5m to develop the national facial biometric matching capability, known simply as “the capability”. Under questioning in Senate estimates on Tuesday night, senior officials from the attorney general’s department said that photos could be pulled from social media sites and used in the new system. The Greens senator, Scott Ludlam, asked: “Is there any law that would prevent the system from ingesting [photographs] from publicly available sources like social media sites?” Andrew Rice, the assistant secretary of the department, answered: “It’s possible that still images out of these kinds of environments could be put into the system. That would be a choice for the users of the system.” [...] “This process will expedite putting a name to the face of terror suspects, murderers and armed robbers, and will also help to detect fraud cases involving criminals that use multiple identities. This initiative does not involve new powers for the commonwealth; it’s simply a mechanism to share existing information already held by jurisdictions.” The new powers do not need to go through parliament to be enacted. “I’m not aware that it requires legislation,” the attorney general, George Brandis, told Senate estimates on Tuesday. A.