FENZ acted swiftly upon the NZPFU notification yesterday that microphones had been enabled on the mobility tablets causing serious concern of possible unlawful surveillance and breaches of privacy.

FENZ has confirmed that that the microphones were enabled “unexpectantly” due to a Microsoft Windows update and that the project is now developing and testing an updated set of Windows policies to ensure the microphone and camera remain disabled for all mobility tablets and to ensure they cannot be re-enabled by the user.

National Commander Russell Wood provided the union with the following information yesterday afternoon:

1. The mobility tablet microphone and camera has always been disabled by policy and as requested by the National Advisor Mobility and the NZPFU rep.
2. A Microsoft Windows update has resulted in the following unexpected changes, which were previously blocked on all tablets:
   
   a. The tablet's microphone has been made available.
   b. Firefighters can now turn the tablets microphone on/off using the Windows microphone settings function.
3. While firefighters can currently turn the tablets microphone on/off, other existing Windows policies prevent any local or remote applications from accessing / using the tablet's microphone.
4. The existing Windows policies prevent FENZ from locally or remotely accessing a mobility tablets microphone, to listen to conversations without someone's knowledge or permission.

We have sought further confirmation of the protections that are or need to be in place to prevent any external provider from accessing and collecting any data, or to listen, from the tablets and confirmation that it is not FENZ’s intentions to enable those functions.

In the interim we ask all crews to check the microphone and camera functions are not enabled on the tablets and to notify the union if there are any further concerns.

We appreciate the members who raised this issue with us as privacy rights are precious and require vigilance in the ever-changing advances in technology.  We also acknowledge our representative on the project and the project team acting swiftly to identify the cause and look forward to confirmation that the updated set of policies have been fully implemented to ensure the functions remain disabled and are unable to be enabled by the user.

In unity,
Wattie Watson
National Secretary