Australia dumps national ID card
Opponents of Australia's controversial Access Card received an early Christmas present earlier this month when the incoming Rudd Labor Government finally axed the controversial ID program. Had it been implemented, the Access Card program would have required Australians to present the smart card anytime they dealt with certain federal departments, including Medicare, Centrelink, the Child Support Agency, or Veterans' Affairs...LinkEncrypted information contained within the card's RFID chip would have included a person's legal name, date of birth, gender, address, signature, card number, card expiration date, and Medicare number. Provisions were also included that would allow additional information deemed to be necessary for either "the administration or purposes of the Act."
Australians were unhappy about being forced to carry a unique ID card merely for the purpose of interacting with basic human and health services, and the proposal faced opposition from its very inception. The defeat of John Howard in the Australian polls was the last gasp of the Access Card program, which was killed off as one of the very first acts of the new Labor government, lead by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Update: Patrick Gray sez, "You posted an Ars Technica piece about the new Australian Government ditching the proposed Access Card. While that's technically true, Labor's being a tad loose with regard to its plans for a similar scheme. They have so far refused to rule out introducing their own 'access card'. I've covered this all year on my security podcast.
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But... but... how will they ever fight the war on terror?
Or...or...tell who's in the country legally?
The smart card seemed like a good idea to me. Who cares if one card includes a person's legal name, date of birth, gender, address, signature, card number, card expiration date and Medicare number? Every one of those details (minus the medicare number) already appear on an Australian driver's license and passport. Not everyone today owns a passport or even drives - so it would have been beneficial for offering an accepted ID for people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Dealing with Health services already requires a bunch of different ID's be shown and your signature. I know people were scared it's going to evolve into some Orwellian nightmare but really the smart card would have just been convenient for everyone.
Seriously, I know the guys at Ars take pride in accurate reporting - but this is one heck of a beatup of the issue. The health and human services access card project as it was known hasn't even rated a significant mention in the media or social tracking polls down here in the land of Aus.
As it stands currently, Australians already have to present various cards to different agencies to access services - there are 43 different cards at last count. The proposed system sought to consolidate these cards into one, and also save on reissue and paperwork costs particularly as people move through different life stages and their needs change.
The card as proposed had significant value, and dealt with a large number of community concerns, particularly those arising from the Australia Card days - back in 1987, and well before global terrorism became a catch cry for identity improvement schemes.
Further, there was no information printed on the card visible to the human eye other than a photograph, signature, and the unique card ID. Everything else on the card could only be accessed on specially designed hardware, and even then the hardware could only access specific sectors of information, medical data for health professionals, basic identity and verification information for benefit agencies, etc.
The closure of this project is a devolution for the Australian community, and just sets back the need to modernise the machinery of dealing with government a few more years.
Maybe I'll get branded just another sheep buying into The Man's lies for saying this: but I sort of like the idea of a single card that I could use for many different purposes. Currently I have a slew of cards in my wallet. Even as a relatively healthy individual I have at least three different cards for medical purposes alone, not counting blood donor and dental cards.
I'm sure that there are terrible ways the Big Brother could abuse the information conveniently packaged in a single card/database for nefarious purposes, and not sure I like the whole idea of RFID tagging (as it's problems have been mentioned before hereabouts).
But since I have to carry all kinds of information on my person anyway, why not have it packaged more conveniently? Sure identity theft could always be a problem, but then if I lost my wallet currently I'd still be open to identity theft and would take awhile to remember all the cards I had to replace and offices I had to notify of their loss.
I'm not saying a government imposed and required card is the answer, but I certainly think it'd be more convenient of I could use fewer identification devices to get the same range of activities done.
Count me in as one who thinks a single identity card serving multiple purposes sounds like a good idea. I guess I'm just not as paranoid as the BB personnel seem to constantly be.
As a male Portuguese citizen, I must carry or at least take care of the ID card (which is a large, non-standard size lump of plastic-laminated paper), National Health Service and Fiscal Identification (regular ISO 7813 sizes), Registred Voters' card (same size as the ID Card, only it's not laminated, and thankfully, not required anymore), military registration card (which is a bunch of folded paper) and possibly a few more I'm forgetting or don't have, such as Drivers' License or Passport.
Like #5 Peter K. I'd trade all this for a unique card - which is on the works. The only thing I'm concerned about is how easily RFID protections are circumvented. I'm fine if for some twisted reason stores track my purchases, but when it comes to identification purposes, I'm not comfortable at all (I mean, not many people know my b-day and even less know my middle names, for instance)
I'm really surprised that people can dismiss privacy concerns as paranoia. Why should cops automatically have access to my medical data? Who benefits from that?
National ID systems are notoriously bad at their assigned task. The technology to keep this data safe just doesn't exist. If you don't believe me, just look at the way Tax File Numbers (TFNs)currently work in Australia (TFNs are the de facto national ID system). As the technology and infrastructure are inevitably outsourced to nongovernmental bodies, the amount of people needed to keep the technology secret will expand. For example, 20 000 external organisations in Australia were required to sign confidentiality agreements to keep the algorithm for checking TFNs secret: this algorithm is now common knowledge, making TFNs useless.
It's a lot of pointless risk and privacy sacrifice to make your wallet less cluttered. I'm not sure those who supported the card in these comments are actually aware of the info that was proposed to go on the card, either.
Centralising Identity into one database makes it alot easier for hackers to steal identity.
I for one am for this being scrapped, & am glad to see our new Labor government scrapping such devious right wing Liberal government plans.
I'd rather have a wallet with 12 cards that all show different parts of who I am and would each have to be forged, than one card, that everyone knows contains all my info and would only have to be forged/hacked once. It all seems so convenient until you get stung.
It should be pointed out that the Australia Card of the late 1980s was proposed by the Labor Govt and opposed by the Liberals (who blocked it in the Senate twice until the policy was abandoned in '89).
It's not a matter of Liberal bad, Labor good. Australia Card II was proposed by the Liberals and (kind of) opposed by Labor. Australia Card I was linked to the rollback of the welfare state and the abandonment social democracy, Australia Card II was part of the security pantomime the Liberals were putting on.
I don't think the article linked is correct at all. There was little opposition to Australia Card II, particularly because it was eclipsed by the Liberal's fucking satanic industrial relations policy. At a guess, I'd say it is more to do with the current government's need to reign in spending in order to keep interest rates at politically managable levels.
There's not much Americans opposing the REAL ID regime can take from that, as the outcome in Australia was down to local issues. Maybe the author is confusing it with the massive and wide opposition to Australia Card I?
Why do we need to store any info on the card at all (except for the serial number)? It's not like your name, date of birth, gender, address, signature, etc is not stored in a database kept by the card issuer. When you go to a hospital, they're not going to read your medical history from the card. They'll read the card serial number, and use that to pull your medical history from their database. If the info was stored on your card, can you imagine what happens when you lose the card, or it is damaged?
Heck, why do we need the card at all. We just need the serial number. Just give every one a unique ID number. You can memorize it or scrawl it on a piece of paper. When you go to a bank, you don't have to show proof of ID. You just tell them your ID number, they key it into the computer, and your biometrics pops up. They can look at your photo, check your height, check your fingerprint, etc.
When you leave the country, you don't have to carry a passport. Just tell them your ID number. There will be no more fake passports. To make it easier to remember, we can make the "ID number" alphanumeric. Everybody can choose their own ID, so long as it's not already taken. Pretty soon, it'll be used as your name. Imagine, a unique name for everybody on the planet. :)