on November 25, 2007 by Martin in Politics, Comments Off

Smart Card Project: Reading Between the Lines

I see the Smart Card initiative as another step towards being a Big Brother society: government knows what you’re doing, where you live, what you eat, what medicine you buy, where you work, how much you earn, what you do with your earnings, etc which, quite frankly, is none of their damn business.

Which is why I take offence at their Smart Card Project aka “Health and Social Services smart card initiative”.

Taken from http://www.humanservices.gov.au/media/releases/060509b.htm:

The introduction of the new access card will cut some of the red tape involved in obtaining health and social services benefits, whilst delivering a more convenient, efficient and secure system for obtaining Government health and social services benefits.

The inclusion of a digital photograph on the access card will significantly enhance the identity security elements of the card, protecting the cardholder’s identity and reducing opportunities for fraud. So if your card is lost or stolen it can’t be used by anyone else.

However, there is more to this, if you question it and take into account the system as it already is plus apply a little logic. This is what we get:

The introduction of the new access card will cut some of the red tape involved in obtaining health and social services

We want to make it easier than ever to track everything you do! Get into the system easier so we can generate personal data to sell to the highest bidder. Or wait for some more government employees with a grudge.

delivering a more convenient, efficient and secure system

They’ve had how long to get the system right by now? Is the government that incompetant? This rhetoric isn’t sales talk for the system, it’s a cover for the bad jobs they’ve already been delivering to the Australian public. What’s this rumour about being secure? Wasn’t their system broken into a major case of identity theft already committed? And they want us to allow them to store our entire lives on a computer system with RS (rat sh!t) security.

obtaining Government health and social services benefits

Well, for those who can get it anyway, before signing over your life and soul.

digital photograph on the access card will significantly enhance the identity security

…because we know for a fact that identity cards, licenses and other means of identification have never been forged, counterfeited, modified… oh, wait….

protecting the cardholder’s identity and reducing opportunities for fraud

Yes, and its impossible to make fake IDs or make purchase non-consented purchases with someone elses credit card who you borrowed from but never told them about, let alone know who they are. Err… just a second…

if your card is lost or stolen it can’t be used by anyone else

Yes, because even though the first card was invented in 1950 by Ralph Schneider and Frank X. McNamara, Visa came out in 1958 and Mastercard in 1966, we STILL can not make a system that is secure, trustworthy and protects privacy. Hopefully we got it this time! If not, we can always screw the public over again and get the PR department to come in a rescue us, or find some patsy to blame it on!

No, no, we’re not copying the UK and the US. No, we promise it is not an ID card, so rest assured your privacy concerns. Just because we are obligingly forcing it on people technically makes it “optional”, though implicitly required. Or something like that. Gee, with that last sentence, I should get into parliment. My sarcasm makes pretty good double speak. I can pretend to answer questions when my answers are nothing of the kind.

Ah-huh. What was that great, wonderful and well-known quote again?

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” – Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President.

That’s the one!

Thankfully it was temporarily stalled. Hope everyone else gets some use out of it because I wont be getting one. I thought government served the people? It seems like it’s the other way around at the moment. Well, the purported government anyway.