Protesters had planned to beam messages from projectors disguised as security cameras onto buildings inside the Brisbane summit’s high security zone

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Projectors disguised as security cameras set up to beam protest messages onto buildings from inside the high security zone around the G20 meeting venue in Brisbane presented “no problem” or security threat, according to police.

It is not clear whether the presence of the two projectors would have breached security laws which took effect after police found the devices in streets near the meeting venue on Sunday.

Deputy police commissioner Ross Barnett told ABC radio they were set up “to send a political message up onto the wall of the building, nothing more sinister than that – no threat whatsoever to police or public safety”.

Asked by broadcaster Steve Austin what the problem was if it was a matter of freedom of political speech, Barnett replied: “There is no problem.”

“The issue was that when we first saw these devices we weren’t sure what they were and so we had to take them down and we’re having them examined,” he said.

“Once we determined that they were purely a method of delivering a political message, then the security element of it disappeared.”

Barnett said police would not be putting the projectors back and were still investigating “how they were constructed [and] who bought them”.

Barnett also revealed police would use their powers to extend tough G20 security laws to the University of Queensland in response to US president Barack Obama’s plan to deliver a speech there on Saturday.

He said police commissioner Ian Stewart would likely today consider an application to make “a sectioned area” of UQ a “declared area” along with most of inner Brisbane.

This would expand police search and arrest powers and ban people from carrying items such as tin cans without a “lawful excuse”.