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."

Comments

Good riddance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always did prefer anonymity.

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.

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: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.

Oh, and proof of this.

[ta bu shi da yu]

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1416572.htm 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.
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.
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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: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 ;-). 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.

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.

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?