FOI – It’s not personal … it’s strictly business

By far, most of my Victorian Freedom of Information applications are to police.

Yet, it’s week four before I even mention them in my Secret State series.

That’s because, despite deep-seated philosophical differences about whether individuals captured in the vision would be identifiable and whether the pixelation of faces for FOI release is unreasonable, it really is a case of: “It’s not personal … it’s strictly business.”

It’s much harder to get angry with people when you like them even though a battle in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal is looming for footage of one incident that will be several years old, if and when I even get it.

Sadly, with other FOI officers, it really does feel like it’s personal. It’s the difference between whether you can go have a coffee with them afterwards or just have them glare at you in obvious distaste for exercising your lawful and democratic right to try to access public information.

I understand why Victoria Police will hold off having to pixelate and release footage under FOI legislation for as long as possible. Why wouldn’t they when they have a 35-year-old law that enables it?

The law provides that if documents can be edited so that exempt material is removed, then they have to do it.

It’s been established that video footage is also considered a “document” but many agencies will argue that they don’t have the capacity to pixelate, and there’s nobody there to really ensure that they’re made to because the FOI Commissioner has no real power, and judges in the tribunal don’t appear to want to set a precedent when the legislation doesn’t deal with it.

Much of the time, when push comes to shove, agencies will resolve the issue informally by outsourcing the pixelation and getting the applicant to pay whatever cost is incurred.

However, police won’t do that because they say the footage can’t be provided externally for security reasons, but the point is moot because one of its units can pixelate anyway.

They won’t give it to that unit though because it’s argued that they have far more important things to do, like crime-fighting.

That said, the media unit will sometimes organise pixelation because reluctantly it’s acknowledged that media actually do play a role in crime-fighting as well. But the police FOI unit doesn’t want to do that because then the floodgates will open and they’d then have to do it all the time.

If the FOI legislation wasn’t 35 years-old, it would account for the advance in technology and the fact that documents aren’t just paper anymore, but moving pictures and provide guidance on that.

In Queensland and NSW particularly, both of which have FOI legislation which is less than a decade old, the expectation is that if an agency has video cameras, they are required to have the capacity to pixelate for FOI releases.

While initially there was some resistance to that, many have just chosen to concede that it is something they are required to do. For example, Brisbane City Council has introduced new filtering technology so they only have to put a soft blur over the entire footage which is a lot less work than pixelating each individual face.

Queensland Police regularly releases footage with faces pixelated under FOI laws, but the cost incurred by the applicant appears to pay for the work involved. A recent release of nine clips of people caught speeding more than 40km/h under FOI legislation cost $2700 but that’s an exception, not the rule.

Ironically, of all the releases to media under FOI legislation, footage is the least potentially damning material politicians and chief bureaucrats have to worry about. While TV stations are concentrating on getting exciting video of hoons doing burnouts, or criminals breaking the law, they have less time to do FOI searches on ministerial or fat cat travel and entertainment expenses, or internal corruption investigation reports.

But it is personal, not business for some, and change, in any form, is absolutely abhorrent. Fortunately, they need not worry in the short term as the Victoria Labor government appears to be all talk, no action when it comes to keeping their election promises on improving the state’s FOI legislation.

Without a doubt, when it comes to FOI, Victoria is aptly named.

This is the final weekly blog on Victoria’s FOI laws, but I promise to revisit the topic in the lead-up to the next State Election.

Alison Sandy is the Seven Network’s Freedom of Information Editor