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EFA boss says new digital ID system would make Australia “the mother of all honeypots”.
The chair of digital rights non-profit Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has posed a question for Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten after the minister announced a new digital ID platform.
“Why should Australians trust the Trusted Exchange System with our personal data?” EFA chair John Pane said.
Shorten unveiled the details of the government’s new Trust Exchange platform this week on 13 August during a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra. The Trust Exchange – or TEx – will let individuals use a credential token stored in their myGov account to verify their identity for a range of services, using identification data already stored by the federal government, such as passports and visas.
The program will be rolled out by Services Australia by the end of 2024.
Pane said he was worried about a range of issues with TEx as it stands, particularly when it comes to privacy and equity, and cyber risk issues while the platform is being built and rolled out.
“It seems the government, or a party to be contracted by government, is about to build the ‘mother of all personal data honeypots’, and there is no assurance that our personal data will even be kept in Australia,” Pane said in a statement.
“The Australian public has suffered enough where government and organisations have failed in their duty to protect our personal data and provide trustworthy technology and digital services. Australians simply do not want another robodebt-type failure or mammoth-size data breach of the same ilk as Optus, Medibank, Latitude Finance and MediSecure.
“Our existing privacy laws are unfit for purpose and they substantially fail to promote best practice security and data protection practices. The ongoing government review of the Privacy Act is lamentable as similar reviews done by previous governments going back to 2000. The new Privacy Bill appears to have not only stalled but is said to have strategically diluted digital rights protections and has wilfully ignored the reasonable privacy and security protections demanded by digital rights and civil society organisations for all Australians.”
Dr Erica Mealy, UniSC lecturer in computer science and EFA board member, told ABC National News Radio that, as it stands, myGov is not fit for purpose.
“The minister likened myGov to a Ferrari in the garage we are not utilising,” Mealy said.
“If my Ferrari were as fragile and hackable, I would also be leaving it in the garage and taking the bus.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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