Wanganui Computer legislation enacted

‘Big Brother is watching’? The government’s establishment of New Zealand’s first centralised electronic database through the Wanganui Computer Centre Act raised questions about the state’s ability to gather information on its citizens.

The National Law Enforcement Data Base – better known as the Wanganui Computer – allowed the Police, the Ministry of Transport and the justice system to share information for the first time. It recorded every motor vehicle registration, every driver’s and firearms licence, every traffic and criminal conviction, and the personal details of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. Later, the Serious Fraud Office and authorised local authorities were also given access to the information stored in Whanganui.

In 1976 the Wanganui Computer was regarded as ground-breaking. It was hailed as an efficient collaboration between agencies. The Minister of Police, Allan McCready, described it as ‘probably the most significant crime-fighting weapon ever brought to bear against lawlessness in this country’.

Critics were unconvinced. Civil libertarians likened it to something from George Orwell’s 1984 and mounted numerous protests against the system. Shortly after midnight on 18 November 1982, 22-year-old anarchist Neil Roberts was blown up by his own gelignite bomb as he tried to breach security at the computer centre.

The Wanganui Computer was accessed from hundreds of terminals around the country, at police stations, courts and Ministry of Transport offices. Over time justice-sector agencies began to develop in-house computing capacity. The Whanganui centre closed in 1995 and the Police eventually transferred all its information to a new National Intelligence Application system. In 2005 the Whanganui system was decommissioned.