Public safety or invasion of privacy?

Being asked to provide your name, address, phone number and a photograph of yourself (or have it taken) before you enter a premises is now a thing? Keeping that information for six years is now a thing?

Apparently this is what some local councils are now demanding. Apart from a quick visit to the front counter (which is under security surveillance anyway) you need to do all this to attend a council meeting as an observer or visit any other part of the building where non-staff do not usually go. 

When did behaviour get so bad that this has become necessary for staff safety? Have standards of behaviour really dropped that far? Are staff really in danger?

There have been a few eruptions in our local council recently. An argument broke out when our very political mayor and some of her supporters wanted to give money to the "Yes" side of the Voice to Parliament. They managed to push it through but then had to reverse the decision when the local community made it plain that this was not what the council could do with money intended for local services. 

I do not attend council meetings as an observer but I know someone who does. He goes along, sits there, takes notes if the matter concerns him and then approaches his local ward member to discuss the matter. He is polite but undoubtedly an irritation because more than once something has had to change when J... has analysed the problem.  All the same it is the way things can work for the good. 

J... would probably hand over his details if he thought it was necessary for good governance.  Is it necessary?  I have not asked him but I suspect he would think the demand was unnecessary. Councils in this country are supposed to be about local government and local issues.  

There was even a hint in the report that there might be a demand to provide the same information to use the local library. I can think of many users of our local library who would object to that or be frightened away by it. There are regulars there. They go every day. They spend hours there. They read the papers or do the jigsaw puzzle at the central table. They get themselves a drink of water, use the bathrooms, doze in one of the more comfortable chairs, listen to an audio book and more. The staff know them. I know them and other regular users know them.  Asking them to sign in each day would be something they would simply not be able or willing to do. They are the lonely people, often "homeless" during the day because their place of residence shuts them out until evening.

Are these people a bother? Do we really need to keep tabs on them at all times...and on everyone else as well? 

The library and many others areas (like the shopping centre) are under constant surveillance. It is discreet. Most people go about their daily business without thinking or even knowing about it. If something does go wrong then it will be caught on camera unless you are out of range. When someone does do the wrong thing you can be almost certain they know where those cameras are and avoid them.

I refuse to believe that making people sign in everywhere is going to help. It did not stop the spread of Covid during the worst of the pandemic.  Is it going to stop people expressing their frustration with a council using ratepayer funds for political purposes? If that is what is behind it then we need new members on the council.  I want the "daylight homeless" to be able to go on using the library and other such places in peace.