Australia Scraps National ID Plan

IPU = Imaginary Property Unicorn writes "The proposed Australian 'Access Card', a universal ID that would be required for any Australian wishing to use Medicare, Centrelink, the Child Support Agency, or Veterans' Affairs, has been scrapped by the incoming Rudd Labor Government. The card would have contained an RFID tag with the person's name, date of birth, gender, address, signature, card number, card expiration date, and Medicare number, but there were also provisions to add more personal data later on. It seems that Rudd Labor is not eager to copy the American REAL ID Act."

Good riddance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always did prefer anonymity.

Re:

[boer]

Nice joke and with a kernel of truth. This is why I have never understood the anti-id zealots: how does it make you happier about your society to know people can exploit the system and live their lives under false identities? Unless of course you are one of these people?

How does having better standardised methods of identification advance identity theft? On the contrary!

And if your government likes to spy their own people, how does stopping an id program prevent that? It is not like it is a prerequisite

Re:

[Trailwalker]

The real name for a national ID card is "internal passport." It will be used to control movement of individuals from one part of the country to another and to prevent undesirables from entering designated areas. Really handy for controlling voter demographics and keeping protesters away from events. Papieren Bitte!

Re:

[rtb61]

More importantly it allows for the creation of non-persons, those that have no rights due to their consistent willingness to question and challenge authority.

Not that I am against a 'voluntary' universal ID system. One that is legally protected from unauthorised access, one that you only voluntarily obtain and one that you only voluntarily show and one where there are severe criminal penalties for attempting to over ride those 'voluntary' principles.

A citizen should also be notified when ever anybody ac

Re:

[kestasjk]

For all non-Australians: At the moment here in Australia has a points system, where you need to provide a certain number of points of identification depending on importance. So you can get, say, 40 points from a passport, 40 points from a birth/citizenship certificate, 20 points from a drivers license, etc, and you need to provide 100 points to apply for a credit card, 50 points to get a Medicare refund, etc.

You need to identify yourself when you get Medicare refunds or pick up licenses, and this verific

Re:

[thegrassyknowl]

You don't even want to think about what would happen if you lost the bag with all your most important documents, you just better hold on fucking tight.

I agree that this mess of documents is messy, but once you have a Medicare card you don't need to carry around all that ID. Your driver's license and Medicare card should be enough for almost any medical care you need.

You generally carry enough ID around in your wallet/purse on a daily basis anyway. Usually you know when you're going to open a bank acco

Re:

[nomorecwrd]

Maybe it'a a matter of country size, but here in Chile we implemented a national ID number decades ago, ONE number and one ID card for almost everything, my ID number is the same as my passport, same as my driver's licence, same as my Medicare, same as my social security, etc. Even private companies, like banks, insurance, telephone, cable, etc. identify you with this number. Easy! and very convenient. The number is given to the new born when registred. Our IRS (SII) tracks your taxes with this number

Re:

[ta bu shi da yu]

We do fine. The fact that we are a big country means nothing, we have a low population.

Re:

[blincoln]

"They" can already track you with video cameras and credit card transaction lists. Why do people have a problem with this but no problem with having an IMEI number on their mobile phone?

You can choose to not use mobile phones or credit cards, and wear a hat and sunglasses or some other quasi-disguise around video cameras. You effectively cannot choose to not have a national ID card of the kind that authoritarians campaign for.

Re:

[name*censored*]

You idiot, Jews represent a tiny tiny minority in Australia - only about 120,000 [wikipedia.org]. That's as ludicrous as saying that the Buddhists are secretly in charge of the USA. Besides, most people of the Jewish faith are Caucasian and from first or second world countries, not "hate filled third worlders". How on earth do you manage to remember to breathe in and out 24 hours a day, you mouth breathing simian?

Ah, the irony

[ta bu shi da yu]

I distinctly remember that John Howard actively campaigned against the National ID Card with Bob Hawke was in power. Then he was for it. Bloody hypocrite, I'm so glad he's gone.

Oh, and proof of this.

[ta bu shi da yu]

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1416572.htm [abc.net.au] is a transcript of what was said:

Bob Hawke: ... The Australia Card legislation, which my Government sees as essential to our continued campaign both to finally eliminate tax evasion and fraud in this country and also to the elimination of welfare cheating.
.
.
.
John Howard: When you realise that the assumption of the Australia Card legislation is that every Australian is a cheat, when you realise that it involves establishing a level of intrusion of a draconian kind into the day to day activities of many people and when people really read and understand the legislation, I believe that the support that some people feel, particularly in the ranks of the Government for this proposal, is going to disappear.

That was always the way with John Howard, slippery bastard. He said one thing and then did the other. Thoroughly untrustworthy. How he stayed in power so long, heavens only knows.

Re:Oh, and proof of this.

[syousef]

That was always the way with John Howard, slippery bastard. He said one thing and then did the other. Thoroughly untrustworthy. How he stayed in power so long, heavens only knows

Sadly the reason is that Australians were more interested in low interest rates on their home loans than in any kind of social justice. The real reason he's out is simply that interest rates started going up despite his assurances. Once people realized they weren't going to get their low interest rates (and that the new industrial relations laws were really going to hurt them) they threw him out.

He didn't just suddenly become a "slippery bastard". He always was one. He continually did backflips. He continually failed to support Australian interests in the international arena. He continually sided with big business and against unions which given the working class population is ridiculous.

I do hope Rudd's a better PM. He's a politician, so he's only going to go so far when his own neck is on the line, but it got so bad with Howard that almost any change is welcome.

Re:

[Nazlfrag]

Let us pay tribute to a great man. [youtube.com]

Re:Oh, and proof of this.

[LordLucless]

The reason he stayed in so long is that labour fell apart, and stayed fallen for most of his term. Their leadership changed every few years - and really, even Howard was better than Latham.

Re:

[blind monkey 3]

Easy to get rid of the debt when you sell all your assets, also easy to manage the economy when your main concern is politicians super. How about creating a scheme and calling it a "Future Fund"? WTF is a "Future Fund"? Thirty billion put aside to cover for our FANTASTIC POLITICIANS UNFUNDED SUPER!!! Don't pay for hospitals, don't pay for schools - I know it is supposed to be the job of the state government to pay for public schools but not for Universities and higher education institutions. I gather a Howa

Re:

[timmarhy]

one of the key things labor supporters always attempt to make a point of in federal elections is medical and education - both of which are STATE RUN, and guess what party is in power on a state level? LABOR.

The truth is, that federal spending on education and health increased dramaticly under howard, it's just the state labor governments are fucking useless at running them.

And why are your criticizing the liberals for selling assets to pay off debts? they didn't get the country in such debt in the first

Re:

[blind monkey 3]

You obviously don't read very well, I pointed out that ALTHOUGH HIGH SCHOOL MIGHT BE STATE RESPONSIBILITY, HIGHER EDUCATION IS FEDERAL. Every report has shown that spending is down on this as well as other areas, you want to go around turning a blind eye to things, looking at your obviously precious Liberal party through your rose coloured glasses. Spending has not increased in comparison to the rest of the developed countries [smh.com.au], this is another story [news.com.au], there are plenty but you obviously are only interested i

Re:

[zaydana]

And why are your criticizing the liberals for selling assets to pay off debts? they didn't get the country in such debt in the first place, and it's just sound financial management to sell assets to rid yourself of debt (in fact it's finance 101)

Ever played monopoly?

Thank god you're not in government.

It was just a wedge politics stunt

[dbIII]

It was old fashioned wedge politics and not really meant to be implented seriously. Put up a thin end of the wedge policy and then make fun of the opposition for over reacting, making them look stupid and incompetant. Another classic piece of wedge politics this term was actually martial law "for the children" - sending the army into remote area with child abuse and removing many rights of the residents there, but the opposition did not take the bait and martial law was not really taken advantage of.

Good.

[fotbr]

A request for the rest of the world:

DO NOT COPY US. It will take years to undo the damage this administration has done to the US, and most of the damage will likely never be completely undone. Point and mock if you must, but PLEASE learn from our mistakes.

Re:Good.

[MichaelSmith]

It wasn't really an ID card anyway. Most people who access Government services (usually some kind of welfare) need a card of some sort it identify themselves. For most Australians this means taking a Medicare card along to the doctor, and then to a Medicare office to get a rebate on the doctors fee.

For older people who access multiple services it would be better not to have to carry three of four cards around. There is nothing to stop the federal government from integrating their databases anyway. You don't need a common card for that.

Re:

[fotbr]

My request still applies.

Re:

[Nomen Publicus]

There are plenty of ways to provide identity to a pretty high level of confidence that do not require a huge centralised government database (which from recent evidence, will quickly leak all the data because governments seem to be clueless about data security.)

Re:governments seem to be clueless

[zmollusc]

Governments are clueless about most things. They don't need to worry about how or if things actually work, because as the ruling elite they can fix any problems that directly affect them with a phone call to one of their friends.
For example, if John Q Public needs a visa or a passport there are all sorts of hurdles to overcome, if a minister wants something similar for an employee they just ask a buddy in the relevant department to sort it out.
If the 'entire government database of everything' got leaked and

Re:Good.

[arivanov]

Actually not quite so.

There are plenty of ways to provide identity that do not require online access to a database. X509 at your service. Tried, tested, works, scales to the size of a population (most continental EU ID cards are actually smartcards wich hold an x509 cert). The only thing the ID reader needs to do is verify that the cert on the card is correct and show the information. This can be done by a sub-10$ mass produced device nowdays. It can also be completely standalone for less important apps and for the more important it needs to check for revoked certs via OCSP. It does not really need access to a centralised database. In fact it is better for an ID like this to hold your photo and your biometric because the verification is done through cryptographic integrity. If it holds them it does not need central database access in 99.99% of the cases.

Issuing the ID is a completely different ball game. There you need a database if you want to avoid identity fraud. The bigger, the nastier, the more comprehensive - the better. As a matter of fact such the databases already exist in most countries, they are reasonably well maintained and they work. These are the taxation system databases and all countries with successful ID systems use these as a primary source of information. A good example of database nations like this is any Scandinavian country and Bulgaria out of the ex-Soviet block.

There is a crucial difference here - the database is accessed only on issuing IDs and on updating/checking tax records. It is not accessed by every wannabie wanker in a small quango office who has declared himself the supreme owner of your identity. This is also the crucial difference between RealID, The UK ID, the Australian ID and working ID projects. These all aim to sneak a provision for tens of thousands of wankers to access your data and they do not try to build on the tax system data (which the tax system office rightfully denies them access to). This is also doomed to be abject failures long before they have even been started because they have to build a database for the whole country from scratch.

Re:

[TapeCutter]

In Australia the federal govt. cross-checks specific datatbases looking for inconsistentencies and fraud, it includes tax records (tax fraud), universal health insurance (provider fraud), and social security payments (dole bluggers and double dippers). The prime keys are your Tax File Number (TFN) and medicare id. This has been the situation since the introduction of the TFN legislation that was brought in to compensate for the first failed "Australia card" efforts back in the 80's.

The fact is that the A

Re:

[svunt]

RFID makes it a bit more than a consolidation of cards, really.

Re:

[swillden]

It wasn't really an ID card anyway. Most people who access Government services (usually some kind of welfare) need a card of some sort it identify themselves.

This is true. I actually spent a couple weeks working on IBM's bid, mostly reviewing the security and privacy aspects of the design, so I got to understand the focus pretty well. The primary purposes of the card were to replace some 17 different government-issued ID cards with a single card, and to reduce benefit fraud. It was really about efficiency, not increasing government control. Not only that, the Howard government's RFP did take the privacy aspects pretty seriously -- they wanted strong guaran

Re:

[AGMW]

... they wanted strong guarantees that sensitive information on the card could only be read by authorized government personnel, that those personnel would only have access to the portions that they were suppose to read, and that the back-end databases had fine-grained access control and detailed and indestructible audit trails. ...

For me, this is, in a nut shell, the problem. You simply cannot guarentee security. Look at the muppets in the UK Government handing out details from various secure systems to o

Re:

[swillden]

I'm no fan of national ID cards, but I disagree with your conclusions.

Any ID card is just a shortcut for identity verification, not an identity in and of itself. Identity (of the sort we're talking about here) is built upon two things: "breeder" documents and identity aggregation. Breeder documents are things like birth certificates, driver's licenses, passports, etc. Those are used to establish an identity in the first place, and biometrics can be used to bind that identity to a particular person. A

Re:

[AGMW]

nearly unforgeable

I agree with you that efforts can be made to make an ID Card more difficult to forge, but if it isn't impossible, IMHO, they are worthless, or more likely worse than worthless.

From one end of the scale of bribing an official for a personalized copy, to manufacturing your own good enough copy, there is simply no way to make the system foolproof (for some value of fool).

I'd have to say I love the concept of ID built into the pulp of the paper - now that is something I'd not heard of an

Re:

[swillden]

From one end of the scale of bribing an official for a personalized copy, to manufacturing your own good enough copy, there is simply no way to make the system foolproof (for some value of fool).

Bribing an official is always an option, but just how are you going to forge the digital signatures?

You have to either make an earthshaking mathematical breakthrough, or somehow gain access to the keys. Since the keys would be in a tamper-reactive crypto hardware module that will never give them up, and is itself stored in a secure data center, actually getting copies of them is impossible even for the officials and the system administrators. So, you have to get the systems that normally do the signin

Re:

[Z00L00K]

It's actually about time for an internationally recognized ID standard, national ID:s are sooooo last century...

The reason behind this? - Yes, if you are trying to do something on an international basis some kind of nationally recognized ID is required for some transactions - and if you have an ID card for one country it won't work in another. It's a business issue more than a privacy issue.

The ID is also to prove that you actually are the person you claim that you are. If you want real privacy you can

Re:

[mjwx]

It's actually about time for an internationally recognized ID standard

We have one, its called a passport, its issued by your nation of origin or current citizenship and is recognised the world over as proof of identity.

You do have other forms of useful internationally recognised ID's such as International drivers licenses which are issued in your nation of residence and allow you to drive in nations which co-operate (Australian IDL's are recognised in most countries, I'm not sure about US IDL's as you chaps

Re:

[Z00L00K]

As I noted - passports aren't good or convenient. Awkward size, sensitive and too easy to forge.

Re:

[mjwx]

I don't find the passport size an issue. For the amount of info the passport is designed to hold I think the size is quiet small. I don't find I need to use my passport too much in foreign countries, my Australian Proof of Age card or Drivers License is sufficient to prove my name, age and/or ability to drive. the only times I need to use my passport is when entering or leaving a country, which is exactly what it was intended to do (many countries will use the passport to store Visa On Arrival details rathe

Re:

[Heir Of The Mess]

It's called a credit card, and look how secure that has been. Yes I know a passport also counts, but I was also making a point about security.

Re:

[AGMW]

2. They are easily forged.

Good luck with coming up with an ID card that isn't easily forged! I think easily forged means different things to different people. To the man on the street it may mean can I just pop it into a scanner/photo copier and copy that sucker but to people who actively want to forge them it just means is it possible to forge. Worse than that, is it possible to make a good enough forgery?

If there's only one place that makes them you can still bribe someone (or some group) to get a cop

Re:Good.

[dbIII]

Australia actually copied the system that California used to determine power distribution and pricing despite everyone with a clue pointing out that it was a train wreck in progress. Show us your worst and we will copy it.

Re:

[ozmanjusri]

Australia actually copied the system that California used to determine power distribution and pricing

Do you have any references for that?

My experience with power generation and distribution is that it's a state role and varies widely depending where you live.

Re:

[zsau]

The Kennet Liberal Government during the 1990s privatised power generation and distribution in Victoria. Originally the private distributors had a monopoly over different parts of the city or state, but now they all compete everywhere. (They use the same powerlines, you just pay different people.) I've never bothered myself to understand it, but I've heard as your PP said that it was modelled on the Californian system.

Re:

[ozmanjusri]

The Kennet Liberal Government during the 1990s privatised power generation and distribution in Victoria.

The Kennett Government privatised power in Victoria about the same time as California did, however they were the only state which went down that path. The Victorians were unable to learn from California because much of their privatisation predated California's.

There is a free market [nemmco.com.au] for electricity in the eastern states of Australia, but state owned power generators compete with private industry on a

Re:

[dbIII]

There is no free market for electricity in Australia the same way there really is no free market for wired telecommunications in the USA. Those that own the wire really have a monopoly even with odd contrivances to try to pretend they don't. Also if nobody is moving electrons about in your local area there is no way to indulge in the fantasy that you are buying it from 1000km away - which means the more expensive power sources get subsidised by the less expensive ones to keep the grid up.

Re:

[dbIII]

In the mid 1990s the competition policy introduced at the Federal level upon the State Government run eletricity organisations was based upon the electricity pricing and management structure in California. It amazed and annoyed a few people in the electricity industry at the time and it did apply to the entire country.

Re:

[DeadChobi]

Except for the Condorcet Method, which is arguably the most fair method of conducting elections. Granted, it can develop into stalemates, but it accounts for everyone's preferences and still gives you an opportunity to weigh in on a vote when your top pick is eliminated from the race.

Re:

[dbIII]

I was actually talking about electricity distribution when I mentioned power. Back in the mid 1990s when the first impression of L.A. was sometimes a brownout in the airport there was a proposal to base Australia's electricity competition structure and really the entire management structure with what the Californians had made an obvious mess of. Against all reason and opposition from every state it was implemented.

Re:Good.

[rucs_hack]

but PLEASE learn from our mistakes.

The thing with the US is no matter how bad it gets, your culture has within it a tendancy to say 'screw you' to anyone that's in power, and throw them out. Either that or make things so tough that people quit.

I've been surprised at the no-cons apparent ability to just take over and start the conversion to a police state (facism?) though. Why there hasn't been soime sort of mass revolt is beyond me. You're apparently just sitting back and letting them re-institute a pro rich/powerful people nation.

I have a lot of respect for Americans, but as a country your starting to look a bit, well, stupid. Quite aside from the political situation, its what, 80% of your population beleive the earth is less than 10,000 years old? This does not fill me with confidence. I was considering paying for my son to spend his univeristy years in the state, now I have a doubt.

How long is this going to go on do you think?

Re:

[fotbr]

If you visit a few of the better US universities -- especially those with good science & engineering programs -- you'll find little of the fundamentalist "science-is-bad-everything-we-need-to-know-is-in-this-book-right-here" mentality. Its not really as prevalent as the media makes it out to be. My experience has been that the West coast and the North East have less of that nonsense than other places, while the South and Midwest have more of it (the section referred to as the "Bible Belt" especially)

Re:

[BiggerIsBetter]

To me, that is far more troubling than the guy with his hunting rifle being afraid the police or army would kick his ass in an armed revolt.

FWIW, I agree about the troubling part, but I'd almost wonder if the Armed Forces would be among those at the front of a revolt. I figure (hope) there's enough good men there to serve their country, as opposed to serving their country's politicians, and maybe enough of them have had a gutsfull of their current deployment. Certainly plenty of Vets would be. Seems strange

Re:

[fotbr]

I'd guess there'd be a quite a few members of the armed forces that would not blindly follow orders to kill their fellow citizens. The police, on the other hand, would probably see it as an excuse to finally play with all their toys.

Either way, I doubt any sort of armed revolt will happen in my lifetime, since the majority of my countrymen are happy as long as they can watch "reality" tv shows. Sure, there'll be the occasional localized riot, or the odd lunatic or two trying to blow stuff up, but I see my

Re:

[AbRASiON]

Australia loves copying you guys, trust me I know - I live here.

The hummer is taking off big here now too......... oh the humanity.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Papiers, bitte!

[Hognoxious]

In most European countries it's compulsory to carry an ID card, maybe that's what he means.

Re:

[fmobus]

Funny. You wrote "papiers, bitte" obviously to mock ze germans, but you are not required to carry an ID at all times in Germany. One must have it (e.g. at home) but doesn't have to bring along at all times.

reading comprehension

[fmobus]

oh snap, can't you read the very article you linked?

Personalausweis (German Wikipedia): It is compulsory at age 16 to possess either a "Personalausweis" or a passport, but not to carry it. While police officers and some other officials have a right to demand to see one of those documents, the law does not state that one is obliged to submit the document at that very moment. Fines may only be applied if an identity card or passport is not possessed at all, if the document is expired or if one explicitly refu

I'm getting mixed signals

[bcg]

I find this surprising considering only very recently that Rudd wanted several government bodies to clear media releases, including research [abc.net.au], with the PM's office.

I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies such as these.

Disclaimer: I am an Australian lefty.

Solving real-world problems?

[Nomen Publicus]

It is interesting to see that not one western government that has claimed that ID cards are essential for the war against fraud, terrorism, crime and quite possibly global warming, has been able to present a viable case to the public.

As costs rise (the UK ID card scheme is now expected to cost between 10 and 20 BILLION pounds over 10 years) the government arguments become more and more vague and frantic rather than more solid and sensible.

ID cards seem to be more about giving huge IT contracts to the us

Re:

[Brian Gordon]

My jaw absolutely drops to see how horribly inefficient and corrupt corporations/the government/capitalism/EVERYTHING is for it to cost 20 billion pounds to just give everyone an ID card. Lock the guru in the closet and pay him $100 an hour for a solid week to build the entire system. Then run 50 million $0.01 ID cards off the printers and laminate them for $0.10 each. Holy crap, it's not that hard!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting the costs of updating all systems to recognize the card. The card would probably not be used only as a substitute for driver's id, but also as an electronic ID for lots of different systems

Re:

[tristian_was_here]

I live in the UK and I think that the UK ID cards is a great idea, the government will know 100% about me, heck I will even give them a sperm sample to clone my idiot-ness.
I could become a terror cell waiting to be a terrorist and go to some religious building other than a christian churn or something, who knows?

BTW thats sarcasm and because the UK anti-terror law is stupid I don't fancy spending a month locked up without trial.

ID cards are about centralising power

[Colin Smith]

Having a single index to all the myriad of commercial and government databases which contain information on individuals allows someone with access to those databases (e.g. the security services) to monitor pretty much in real time the movements of all citizens.

Once that power has been created, it's purely down to the definition of the word "terrorist".

 

More personal?

[fahrbot-bot]

The card would have contained an RFID tag with the person's name, date of birth, gender, address, signature, card number, card expiration date, and Medicare number, but there were also provisions to add more personal data later on.

Hmmm..

• more personal-data: height, weight, hair & eye color
• more-personal data: penis size

Australia copy US or Malaysia

[sebol]

Malaysia has been using Identity card a long time ago, just 5 years bak it use MyKad, which is conteained with RFID.

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

The difference between Australia and most other countries is that Australians firmly believe that the Government works for them, not the other way around.

Thank God!

[skeftomai]

The end times have been delayed!

Costly work into its feasability before today...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how much Mega-$$$ were spent, eg, on feasibility studies...

that might have been spent on improving Australia's
Internet access.

Even costly residential developments (eg, Mawson Lakes, SA)
include many houses, that cannot get ADSL, let alone ADSL2+ ...despite that University of South Australia and SA's
"Technology Park" are located immediately adjacent to it.

Re:Costly work into its feasability before today..

[LordLucless]

Fixing Australia's net access is simple, it's just that none of the politicians have the balls for it. Strip Telstra off the infrastructure, and either spin it into a separate company or, preferrably, set it up as a government-run department that charges the telco's for access and is required to provide equal access across Australia.

While Telstra controls the infrastructure, and is compelled against its will to sell it on to its competitors, you're going to have a dysfunctional system. It might not solve

Enough, actually

[WeirdJohn]

DISCLAIMER: I am an Access Card Taskforce member

It's been an interesting ride.

To begin with we had the standard 'moving target with secret agenda'.

Then we had a whole bunch of clueless vendors who were each trying to tie the country up into their own foreign-controlled solution ('the mechanism and algorithms for encryption are not detailed here for obvious reasons' Yeah right - like your particular crypto card ain't worth shit and you don't want anyone to know about the technical details of your patent-app

What?

[Kurayamino-X]

This comes up every decade or two with the tech of the day implimented and gets shot down every time.

Honestly though? I don't see why. Lets see, I've had to provide my drivers licence, my birth certificate, my tax file number, a bank statement with my address on it, etc. to the government for some benefits recently, all this card would be is conveniant. It means instead of collecting all this crap and digging out an old and fragile certificate I'd just have to take one or two cards, and it's not like the

Re:What?

[Admiral Ag]

The usual answer is that people protect their privacy by revealing select information to different entities. For example, you'll tell your bank some stuff, the health system some other stuff, the welfare agency some other stuff, the stores where you have an account some other stuff and so on. In no case is there one entity that has all your personal information. This means two things. First, it means that if one of them is compromised (as has happened in Britain), the information about you that will be compromised is far from complete. Second, it means that any agency or company that has your personal information only has fragments of it and so has less power over you. Knowledge is power, and the ability to selectively reveal information about yourself to differing persons is necessary for the preservation of privacy.

There's a really good SF novel called "Shield" by Poul Anderson that explores this idea. Unlike a lot of SF novels, it actually has something profound to say.

Re:What?

[The Master Control P]

In short, when it comes to the government having information about you the best policy is "deny unless explicitly allowed." Now, if they just wanted to put a (secure) rfid chip in your driver's license that says the same thing the license says, fine.

But whenever this comes up it involves all of your identifying information being on one chip that can be read by any government agency's scanner. It also tends to involve a similar centralized database that's just begging to be abused. Remember: If supporters of a law, when confronted about possible abuses that it would permit, angrily deny that such will occur then you have discovered exactly what the law will be used for as soon and often as possible.

Go here for more information

[nighty5]

Check out the following for more in-depth information to this national ID system.

http://www.privacy.org.au/Campaigns/ID_cards/HSAC.html [privacy.org.au]

I am pleased to see Rudd taking responsibility and listening to Australians, something Howard refused to do which ultimately lead to his demise.

Nice, but watch out for those tasers

[vandan]

I'm not really surprised that Labor has pulled back from this. It's not exactly a popular move. And they did just get in thanks to a massive working-class movement that rose to overthrow their 'workchoices' industrial relations bullshit, so they know they can't smack people with this kind of thing at the moment.

But only a couple of minutes ago, I watched an ABC ( the public broadcaster in Australia ) news report on the push for widespread use of tasers in policing. It will be interesting to see if they cave

Making me proud to be an australian again

[mahju]

I'm and Aussie, lived overseas now for more than 5 years, and have lived with people's attitude of Australia sliding down with stuff like this, us back peddling out of the Kyoto agreement that we helped set up, not simply saying sorry for things we have done wrong, and taking asylum seekers not to civilised facilities in Australia, or straight back to where they came from, but rather to dump them on a legally convenient little island made of bird crap in the pacific for more than a year.

Since then Rudd has

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[Merls the Sneaky]

You forgot...

Surprise visit to Iraq, promises to remove "combat troops" and send them home, by June.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Verte]

It'd be neato if every government around the world suddenly apologised to all the people they had killed in wars during their existence- I'm sure we've all had relatives lose lives due to the behaviour of some stupid bureaucrats. But would the payout be worth it? What benefit does it bring to the country as a whole?

Frankly, I've got enough things to pay for. My tax dollars already go to enough people on handouts without going to orphans that are (almost always [1]) big enough and ugly enough to look afte

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[Verte]

Ah, I see your point went right over my head.

I'm not really convinced, but it doesn't make a lot of difference now- at least it will be over and done with.

Can't wait for this in the UK

[MadMidnightBomber]

Next election we can return a Labour government who will get rid of all this ID card silliness. Oh, wait...

Ob convict joke

[Bloke down the pub]

Can't we just tattoo or brand a number onto everyone, like we did with their grandfathers?

I don't get this

[Majin Bubu]

As an European, actually Italian, I don't really get this. I have been carrying my ID card (which is just a piece of stamped paper, by the way, and very cheap) since I was 15 or so, and it allows me to travel the whole EU (which is some 26 countries, by the way) without passport or visa. It certainly has no "police state" connotations in our culture.
I can understand why a RFID-card would be dangerous to privacy, but our cards have nothing like it. I, for one, would welcome a chipped card (not readable at a

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[AGMW]

... that would reduce the clutter in my wallet by integrating, for example, driver license, ID card, medical assistance etc.

Ah, you see here in the UK you only need to carry money! You had already been done the slippery slope of having to carry some form of ID, or indeed forms of ID, so getting them all onto one card would indeed seem like a good idea. We don't have to carry our driving licence, even if we are driving. We don't need to carry any ID at all, at the moment. This means we are far less likely

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[AGMW]

wouldn't you prefer to be ID'ed and go your way

Personally, no I wouldn't. My hackles raise just at the phrase "be ID'ed"! I know the anti-ID/Tinfoil Hat people bandy about the phrase "Police State" way too much, but that just reminds me of WWII movies and, I'm sorry, but I just don't want to live in a society like that! In any case, if they ID you and let you on your way then you obviously haven't done anything to bad anyway, and a verbal warning would likely suffice (certainly in the good old UK with our

Belgium has had it for ages

[Govannon]

In WWII the Germans introduced the mandatory ID card here in Belgium and in several other countries too. With the liberation of Belgium our government decided to keep the ID card as they thought is was a good idea.

A few years ago the "Eid" was introduced, which is an ID card with limited personal information (name, address & picture) digitally stored onto the chip. Till this day I am not aware of any mayor privacy rights being broken, or identities being stolen or whatnot. Mind you I am the typical p

The problem is not ID card themselves

[loopkin]

Most of Europe has ID cards, and nobody ever heard it's police states.
The thing is to emit cards, you need a database. So the card becomes a key to your entry in the ID database. So far, so good.
Now, if you use it also to pay your taxes, the same card has become a key to your tax records and earnings. The same if you use it for your medical insurance, and so on.
Here's the privacy breach: the "one card does all" scheme is really very bad, because it allows easily to retrieve personal data from different databases.

Take France. There is one of the most advanced computer-related privacy law (IT and Freedom Act):
- there is a "national" ID card, that is connected to nothing, except maybe the passports database
- there is a medical state insurance ID card (Vitale card), that is connected to nothing, except other medical insurances, and your record at your doctor's
- for the rest (taxes, ...), where you don't need an ID card, there aren't ID cards.
All the systems have different unique identification numbers ("national" ID card number, medical state insurance number, tax payer number, ...) and it is disallowed by the law (for anyone, including the state), to make a database that references all those id numbers.
So where's the problem there ? (except that it's for sure more expensive that having a "one card does all", but privacy has its price).

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[JimBobJoe]

Most of Europe has ID cards, and nobody ever heard it's police states.

Arguably you went ahead and answered your own question. Many European nations have ID cards (either single purpose--like the French medical, or multi-purpose) but the purposes they serve are small time bureaucratic matters--things which are achieved in other nations without ID cards.

If it would be rather easy to get rid of the ID card, then you really don't have one in the full sense of the term.

Aussies may want to support REAL ID

[PHAEDRU5]

According to Wikipedia:

Under the REAL ID Act, nationals of Australia are eligible to receive a special E-3 visa. This provision was the result of negotiations between the two countries that also led to the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement which came into force on January 1, 2005.

Do us a favour....

[mormop]

Can you get your man Rudd to phone Gordon Brown and talk some sense into him please. Either that or we'll do you a swap but I don't think you'd be that stupid.

Re:What exactly is your problem with ID cards?

[Zey]

What exactly is the problem with having some reliable method of identifying a particular person?

Too convenient, less intrusive and far less paperwork for the bureaucrats to shuffle when compared to the existing 100 points of ID check [nsw.gov.au] ;-). Seriously though, a card with RFID deserved to be killed dead: highly dodgy for anyone to be able to scan your ID from a distance (and potentially steal it).

ID cards and government database sharing are useful to governments for clubbing individuals who've messed up their paperwork. An ID card which works in our favour by reducing the red tape and paperwork we must deal with by auto-filling in the data they already have... now that would be a winner.

So what do you want?

[bruce_the_loon]

An RFID card that can be read can fill in all that data for you, but is also intrusive. Can't have the best of both worlds.

I prefer the manual filling in of forms. Makes sure I get it right. Can you see the unwashed hippy behind the counter saying that the CARD says I'm a female lion trainer because some tit miscaptured the data? And refusing to change it because "the computer can't be wrong"

Given the magnitude of errors South Africa already comes up with, changing gender, ethnic group, wrong photo to wro

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[Zey]

An RFID card that can be read can fill in all that data for you, but is also intrusive. Can't have the best of both worlds.

Of course you can. It's currently called the magnetic strip. Can't be read from a distance, just with a reader. Go high tech with the basic principle and you'll use NVRAM or a DVD-RW optical stripe. Go high tech/low tech and you can have the data written in highly miniaturized bar codes, too small for the naked eye but, again, visible to readers.

Government will know what it wants

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[mrmeval]

http://www.cardtechnology.com/article.html?id=20061117ST7IODKW [cardtechnology.com]

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[The Archon V2.0]

Can you see the unwashed hippy behind the counter saying that the CARD says I'm a female lion trainer because some tit miscaptured the data? And refusing to change it because "the computer can't be wrong"

Unwashed hippy? Please. I've had more trouble from people in neat little outfits. A particularly stupid medical database at this one hospital determined that only pregnant women got a certain series of blood tests. I've been directed to the maternity department by the desk jockeys more times than I can c

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[JohnBailey]

Many countries have implemented national ID card schemes. In the US, where many people don't even have a passport and credentials required to get state drivers licenses (and other forms of state ID) vary widely. What exactly is the problem with having some reliable method of identifying a particular person?

Where do you get the word "reliable" from?

Re:What exactly is your problem with ID cards?

[jimicus]

What exactly is the problem with having some reliable method of identifying a particular person?

I suspect you're trolling, since a similar question comes up every time the ID card debate is raised.

Nevertheless, I'll bite.

You're asking the wrong question. When a government wants something, the correct question is "what benefit does this offer to me as a citizen?" and measure it up against the costs. This is because government exists for the benefit of the citizens.

As soon as you start saying "I don't see why not", you're essentially accepting that you should do something for the benefit of the government. While this isn't in and of itself dangerous, it has a lot of potential to be. For instance, the UK government is currently making noises about ID cards - yet in the last month there have been no fewer than 3 major instances of personal data being lost by UK government departments. (Google for Revenue Child Benefit data loss, DVLA data loss and NHS data loss if you don't believe me).

Over 26 million records have gone missing and for most of those records there was more than enough data to carry out fraud. And we're supposed to trust this government with a single database which contains all of this and more?

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[Colin Smith]

This is because government exists for the benefit of the citizens.

"government exists to benefit some citizens more than others."

There you go. Much more accurate.
 

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[stry_cat]

You're asking the wrong question. When a government wants something, the correct question is "what benefit does this offer to me as a citizen?" and measure it up against the costs. This is because government exists for the benefit of the citizens.

Actually you're also asking the wrong question. The correct question is "Is this a legitimate function of government?"

I can't think of any legitimate function of government which would require a national ID card.

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[jimicus]

Depending on where you are in the world, there are plenty of legitimate functions of government which would benefit from a national ID card.

Health and benefits provision immediately spring to mind - particularly if you're concerned about only providing such benefits to taxpayers.

However, neither of these particularly require a national ID card. And in many cases, introducing one would simply add another layer of bureaucracy which criminals would work around and legitimate citizens would be inconvenienced b

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[Gandalf_the_Beardy]

See here... http://www.helium.com/tm/570058/unlike-countries-tradition-identity [helium.com] "A 54 year old dry cleaner named Clarence Willock was stopped by police while driving in London in December 1950. He was ordered to produce his ID card at his local police station within 48 hours. He refused point blank, saying he would not produce it at any police station at all. He was prosecuted and the case eventually went all the way to the High Court and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard. He remarked that the continua