ASIO Wants Access to Smart Card Database

March 7, 2007: The government’s smart card initiative is again raising concerns in parliament, with the head of ASIO telling a Senate committee that a warrant was not needed for it to request information from the smart card database.

The smart card or “access card” as dubbed by the government, will be required by all adults seeking Medicare payments and is expected to be implemented by 2010.

The service is intended to eliminate welfare fraud by checking user details against a giant database that will include 16.5 million biometric snapshots of registered users. While then Minister for Human Services Joe Hockey said at the time of the card’s announcement that the inclusion of personal information such as data of birth and next of kin would be voluntary, some still fear that the card could be the thin edge of the wedge.

In this regard, the revelation made by ASIO head Paul O’Sullivan certainly isn’t helping government claims that the smart card would end up being used as an identity card, particularly considering the AFP also would like powers to use the database in its own investigations.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald though, Patricia Scott, secretary for the Department of Human Services, says that talks between lawyers from the department and ASIO have concluded that ASIO could only request access to the card itself, not the database. If this request was denied, ASIO would then have to resort to a court order.

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