Nicholas Stuart writes (‘Government needs to act on our information security’, 2/8) that “capacity of data mining means that it’s relatively easy to build up a highly detailed picture that may reveal much more than you think.” Yes, and Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon already know much, perhaps too much, about our individual preferences and behaviours. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the local grocer is able to identify and check the credit rating of each customer using video surveillance.
We learn today that the next Apple iPhone will unlock using facial recognition. Yesterday we heard other nations, including Malaysia, will be using biometric methods to identify immigrant workers. Yet, in Australia’s airports contractors can access highly sensitive areas with a basic photo ID or a swipe card.
We are far behind in the techniques of assuring identification, outside of purpose-built secure environments. Australians seem to be very wary of the simplest and safest means of assuring identity, such as digital fingerprint and iris scan.
Why are we so far behind? It is no wonder the security authorities are finding gaps wide enough to drive a bus through security perimeters.
The offices that should have been driving reforms and updates to national identity management are under the banners of Prime Minister and Attorney-General. More relevantly, will the new Home Affairs Department be able to do any better? While we wait to find out, I’ll be happy to walk any street in town without any means of identification and defy any officer of any creed to demand I give any more than my name and address. But then, I don’t look like a foreigner or someone who has overstayed their work visa.
Policy Consultation Paper – Visa Simplification: Transforming Australia’s Visa System
- To what extent should the Government collect biometrics from visa applicants?
Recently I passed through Border Force Control at Melbourne Airport using someone else’s passport. (A mix-up at the check-in inadvertently left two of a group holding the wrong passports.) Facial recognition system picked up the discrepancy and I was ushered to a Border Force officer. The passport was then scanned and I was free to leave the country, no questions asked. My friend, using my passport, went through the same process with the same outcome. At our current level of security alert I would have expected better from a system that we are told is the best in the world. George Omachen, Torquay
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