New Zealand Police

Established by New Zealand Police's own news release of 26 April 2023 announcing the findings of a baseline audit into how staff access externally provided ANPR data. The audit cross-referenced over 350,000 ANPR reviews from 2018 to 2022 across two provider platforms. Assistant Commissioner Johnson is quoted saying the audit confirmed the vast majority of Police use the tool within guidelines; five officers were referred for misconduct review. Current use is confirmed by the ANPR chapter of the Police Manual, published in April 2026 on the Police website, which describes 'Police use of NPI collected by third party operators' and 'approved ANPR use'. Police's own emergent technologies page separately states Police have 'Automatic Number Plate Recognition on some cars', so the deployment covers both in-vehicle reading and access to third-party networks.

No start date is given: the audits cover use from 2018, which establishes use by then but not a start date. No legal basis is recorded: none of the sources states a statute or provision.

Update, November 2026. The New Zealand Police Assurance Group published a follow-up audit in December 2024 of staff use of two externally provided ANPR platforms, Auror and SaferCities (VGRID), covering the financial years 2018/19 to 2023/24. It reports more than 8,600 registered users in 2024 (6,150 in 2022); about 55,000 to 60,000 searches a month across both platforms in 2023/24 (roughly 20,000 to 25,000 in 2022); 247,162 Auror searches and 441,460 VGRID searches in 2023/24; and tracking alerts falling to roughly 20 to 30 requests a month from about 200 a month in 2022. The audit states no specific legal basis, referring to Police policies and instructions on when tracking may be used. It says repeat audits of both platforms will be included in Police's rolling Audit and Assurance Work Plan, that results could be shared with governance groups such as the Assurance and Risk Committee and made available on request to oversight bodies such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and that summaries of usage statistics might be published.