Government Defends Card As Criticisms Grow

Government Defends Card As Criticisms Grow

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday March 3, 2007

Mark Metherell

THE Federal Government has denied its national smart card photograph database will be linked to public surveillance video systems but has admitted police and security agencies will be able to use the system to identify suspect individuals.

The card, which all adults would need from 2010 to get welfare and Medicare payments, is being introduced to streamline the benefits system. The Government estimates the identification technology could cut fraud by $3 billion over 10 years.

The Government has fought claims that it will develop into an identity card and is proposing heavy penalties against non-government bodies who demand it for identification purposes.

At the first day of Senate committee hearings into the access card system, which will hold 16 million photographs, the Government dismissed the idea the store would be linked to closed circuit television systems.

But a spokesman for the Minister for Human Services, Ian Campbell, said that agencies such as the police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation would, with a search warrant, be able to gain access to match photographs of suspects with those on the card database.

This was in line with current practice for law enforcement bodies seeking access to personal information held by the Government. "It would be business as usual," the spokesman said.

The Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the card's photographic database dramatically extended the reach of government, and its denial of a link with closed circuit camera systems was "a straw man ... For practical purposes they are linked."

It would still mean that it was possible for authorities to seek identity checks on people attending demonstrations who could wrongly be deemed to be a security risk, Senator Nettle told the Herald.

The Australian Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja said the Government had failed to quell her concerns about the lack of privacy protection and the immunity from prosecution federal and state employees would have who wrongly required a person to produce the card.

Yesterday's hearing of the Senate's Finance and Public Administration Committee, which is investigating the card legislation, was told the system presented more risks to privacy than the Australia Card, aborted by the Labor government in 1987.

An expert on privacy law, Graham Greenleaf, said there was little to distinguish the scheme from the Australia Card except that it was "far more dangerous than that primitive proposal".

Professor Greenleaf, the co-director of UNSW's Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, has compared the two schemes and has identified 14 areas where he says the access card holds more dangers to privacy.

He called for the Government to dump the plan on the principle ground there was an "overwhelming likelihood" it would lead to a national ID system.

The card was likely to become predominant in use for identification purposes.