This appeared last week:
Big Brother given new access to Australians' personal data
- By Fergus Hanson
- 11:00PM October 22, 2018
Many of us are unaware a transformational digital initiative is about to involve every Australian: digital identity. Many are probably equally unaware of the problems with the approach, including the risk of a Western version of China’s social credit system that can effectively rank individuals and shape behaviour.
The new digital identity, known as GovPass, is the latest attempt to roll out a national identity scheme. Its forebears, the Hawke government’s Australia Card and the Howard government’s Access Card, fell over in the face of community backlash. GovPass, which is enabled by a new database of biometric templates that has been established for every Australian, makes them seem quaint.
In principle, a digital identity is not a bad idea. It is an essential microeconomic reform for a 21st century economy that has the potential to deliver significant productivity and efficiency gains.
It will allow you to quickly confirm your personal details, entitlements and authorisations, such as proving you are over 18 years, delegating the pick-up of prescriptions or automatically confirming your concession status.
It requires a one-off verification, for example, by photographing your driver’s licence with your phone (the details of which are then checked against the relevant government database) or, for higher level verification, taking a selfie (which is checked against a biometric template of your face that the government has collated).
This digital identity, stored on a mobile app, can be used to transact with government and companies (for example, by entering your phone number on their websites and providing permission to undertake the identity check via your digital identity mobile app) or in person without the need to carry a wallet and documents.
Like other government digitisation schemes, the problem is in the execution. As the general unawareness of this scheme indicates, communication has been wanting. The Digital Transformation Agency has issued regular updates on the progress of the GovPass scheme but, with few exceptions, these have passed almost unnoticed. Government polling suggests it’s right to be fearful of scaring the public: 69 per cent of Australians are more concerned about their online privacy than they were five years ago.
As with other recent digitisation initiatives, the scheme also threatens to erode our rights. Because of the way these schemes are approached — solving individual departmental challenges rather than trying to empower citizens — each new digitisation initiative forces people to trade off more of their rights for the convenience offered.
Repeatedly we’re assured that everything’s fine. Only, often it is not. Opt in can become opt out. What is said to be safe and secure might mean warrantless police access. Without an overhaul in approach, digital identity will see more unnecessary encroachment by government into our lives.
The shame is that, properly implemented, these initiatives could have the opposite effect.
Another problem with the present approach is that taxpayers are being asked to fund two competing schemes. The government allocated $92.4 million in the 2018-19 budget to create the infrastructure that will underpin GovPass and fund its initial rollout. But Australia Post has spent up to $50m developing a digital identity scheme known as Digital iD that is up and running. It is accepted at licensed premises as proof of age and to confirm identity for online payments or to pick up parcels. Why two government schemes?
…..
The string of recent digitisation fails — the My Health Record opt-out debate and the census — points to a broader problem. To ensure these important initiatives succeed, we will need a 180-degree change in approach with fully empowered Australian citizens at its centre. The government should conduct a root-and-branch review of how privacy protections are going to operate in the 21st century.
Read the full article here:
You can download the full report from ASPI from this link:
And you can read the report online here:
The summary of the problem is rather telling.
What’s the problem?
Another major government digitisation scheme—digital identity—is set to cause controversy and risk further disempowering Australians in the absence of clearer policy and legislative controls. That’s problematic because digital identity has the potential to power the 21st-century economy, society and government by providing easy, high-confidence verification of identity that will allow millions of offline transactions to move online and enable a string of enhanced services, such as easy delegation of authority (for example, to pick up prescriptions) and verifications (such as proof of age online).
However, the national digital identity program, known as GovPass, faces obstacles on multiple fronts:
- Public communication about the scheme and its implications has been wanting, leaving the public largely unaware of the change afoot.
- A key biometric enabling service for digital identity, the Face Verification Service (FVS), risks being conflated with the far-reaching law enforcement biometric enabler—the Face Identification Service (FIS)—that’s part of the same national facial biometric matching capability agreed to by Australian Government and state and territory government leaders in October 2017. The FIS lacks adequate safeguards and in its current form is likely to attract public opposition far exceeding that directed towards the My Health Record scheme.
- The government is now building two digital identity schemes that will compete against each other. The first, which is already operational, was built by Australia Post at a cost of $30–50 million and is known as Digital iD. The second scheme, GovPass, secured $92.4 million in the 2018–19 Budget to create the infrastructure that will underpin it and fund its initial rollout.
- Neither GovPass nor Digital iD is governed by dedicated legislation, beyond existing laws such as the inadequate Privacy Act 1988, leaving Australians vulnerable to having their data misused.
- The lack of clarity about how the private sector will and will not be able to use the schemes will turbocharge the ability to gather detailed profiles of individual Australians. Controls are needed to prevent a Western version of China’s ‘social credit’ scheme emerging.
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The bottom line seems to be they are wanting to slip another ID system (or two for Heaven’s sake) in under our noses with inadequate legal protection and risk of all sorts of abuse.
In parallel we have the Government out there spruiking Digital Transformation and a seemingly third ID system (myGovID).
Coalition plans overhaul of data sharing and release laws in 2019
by Tom McIlroy
- Updated Oct 26 2018 at 11:00 PM
The Coalition will overhaul cumbersome and outdated data sharing laws in 2019, part of efforts to close an entrenched trust deficit with the public and improve service delivery.
Digital Transformation Minister Michael Keenan wants to win back public confidence about privacy and security, to harness the power of big data through government digital transformation.
Aiming for Australia to remain among the top three nations for digital delivery through to 2025, Mr Keenan says the appointments of former deputy Australian statistician Randall Brugeaud to head the government's Digital Transformation Agency and former IP Australia chief operating officer Deborah Anton as interim National Data Commissioner will help deliver progress and reform.
"We have to do what we can to make accessing government services an easy seamless experience, but also to ensure people trust us to make sure any information we have about them is treated appropriately, and that we do respect their privacy," he told AFR Weekend.
"We have incredibly strong protections in place and individuals' data is safe with us."
The Digital Transformation Agency is preparing a whole-of-government digital strategy, coming as the government progresses controversial digital ID programs including GovPass and myGovID.
The opt-in myGovID pilot run by the Tax Office will enable 100,000 participants to apply for a Tax File number online, replacing the need for paper-based proof of identity.
Lots more here:
And again we have the famous line:
"We have incredibly strong protections in place and individuals' data is safe with us."
Again the question is should you trust the Government with your data for the convenience these services offer. You have to wonder why Government is spending millions of dollars on these system. Is it altruism or are there deeper motives. Frankly I have no idea and the Government does not appear to be saying.
Until see real safeguards and strong citizen control of the data I would be skeptical. Where is the equivalent of the European GDPR legislation for OZ up to? Nowhere as far as I know? I also note this happens after a Federal Election the present Government looks a cert to loose?
We really need to keep a close eye on all this and I won’t even ask about the status of the Individual Health Identifier System.
David.
2 comments:
I think they should be careful implementing facial recognition technology. Yes it may look like a face to use, but to a machine it is just data that needs to meet certain criteria. The Russian know this (nothing against them) and they seemingly have been harvesting Facebook and other to build up facial libraries. One can only imagine to use as a means to access and control.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/10/13/what-facebooks-russian-data-leak-shows-about-government-surveillance-and-facial-recognition/amp/
Maybe it is as simple as keeping the army of spies and cyber geeks busy preying on the public then they will be to busy to turn their attentions toward the real risk - Governments themselves.
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