A stark warning has been issued that Australia is on a rapid path towards becoming a real-life Orwellian dystopia, with pervasive artificial intelligence surveillance set to monitor every public move within the next few years.
From Traffic Cameras to Total Monitoring
Dr Raffaele Ciriello, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, told the Daily Mail that surveillance cameras are already ubiquitous and that integrating AI will add a powerful, intrusive new layer. He estimates this transformation will solidify as the norm in the next three to five years, or ten at the very most.
"It's already here to a large extent," Dr Ciriello stated, highlighting that Australia has constructed a surveillance framework he sees as comparable to China's, though lacking a unified national strategy in both nations. He pointed to a Queensland Audit Office report from September which revealed the state government has limited oversight over the ethical use of AI, particularly in systems detecting phone and seatbelt offences in vehicles.
The report concluded officials have "limited visibility on AI use and emerging ethical risks" and suggested the scheme might breach residents' privacy. Meanwhile, the City of Melbourne Council has debated plans to introduce a privately operated camera and 3D mapping sensor system for monitoring New Year's Eve crowds, with considerations to make it permanent.
A Bleak Future of Bias and Behavioural Change
Dr Ciriello painted a disturbing picture of the future if current trends escalate unchecked. "What it looks like is some form of Orwellian dystopia where we have that large-scale technology in every public sphere," he said. He warned that the inherent biases within AI systems would likely lead to the disproportionate targeting of minorities and underserved populations, subjecting them to increased scrutiny.
The academic also raised concerns about how surveillance alters human behaviour. Citing a colleague's research, he noted a trend in NSW where teenagers deliberately perform for cameras to gain TikTok attention, while others shift activities to less monitored areas. "Every street you're walking, you're being monitored and tracked and that changes your entire behaviour," he said. "There's no real public space and no real private space anymore."
Normalised Surveillance and a Lost Freedom
Dr Ciriello emphasised that AI surveillance is not confined to government. He noted its use by major retailers like Kmart and Bunnings for theft detection, at the Australian Open for facial recognition, and in traffic management. He argued that policies like the federal government's social media ban for under-16s, launched on 10 December, further normalise surveillance by relying on AI algorithms to guess a user's age.
Drawing on his German upbringing, Dr Ciriello expressed shock at Australia's advanced surveillance infrastructure, noting such developments would cause public outcry in Europe due to historical sensitivities around state monitoring. "We're not only at risk of losing that [freedom], we've already lost it in a way," he lamented. "There's no such thing as privacy anymore. Everything is being monitored... We've given up a lot already and the general tendency is towards further erosion of privacy."
He concluded that while the technological infrastructure is firmly in place, Australia critically lacks the robust democratic oversight mechanisms needed to guard against overreach and protect its citizens' liberties in an age of intelligent surveillance.
