The Privacy Commissioner says crime fighting will not be stymied by their orders for police to stop taking masses of photos of people unlawfully.
An official inquiry found police have taken and stored tens of thousands of digital photos for at least a decade without good reason.
The police say they have ceased taking photos of rangatahi - but reject where the line is being drawn and are taking legal advice.
Both National and ACT has expressed sympathy with police.
The Government says it is open to any advice the police might have.
However, the deputy privacy commissioner Liz MacPherson told reporter Phil Pennington the line is in the right place
MacPherson says the compliance notice on police covered young people primarily, but they expect police to change all their
The first three progress reports from police raise further questions.
Commissioner Andrew Coster earlier told RNZ they had deleted 6000 photos.
But the very first report says that by March this year, they had already deleted almost twice that - 11-thousand.
RNZ is querying the discrepancy.
