Locke Keith: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:639;Page:9138] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports the SuperGold card which will be very useful for superannuitants. We will be voting for the legislation as a whole and we hope it will lead to benefits for pensioners more discounts etc. However the Greens see big privacy issues at stake in the legislative provision for microchips. The Law Society said that this is the first time the use of microchips has been authorised on such a large scale and that there is no need for this provision to be included in the legislation at this time. 
If we look at the amendments before the Committee today and at the comments made by the different parties across the political spectrum there seems to be a recognition of the privacy implications in putting microchips on cards and the need for these to be assessed before they are brought into operation. The obvious solution is to leave the question of whether we need legislation to put microchips on cards until after we have had a proper inquiry. That is why the Greens will be supporting Heather Roy’s amendment to take out of the bill any authorisation for microchips on the SuperGold card. 
When we have the inquiry into microchips on the card the first thing we need to bring into play is the Privacy Commissioner. It is shocking that she has been left out so far when this measure obviously has such privacy implications. She is certainly concerned about what could happen. In this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald  
the Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff urges caution and says “There is the potential for ‘function creep’ where the card ends up being used for far more than it was originally intended.” 
We see this function creep all over the place such as with more and more Government databases being matched and linked up and there is an equivalent phenomenon in the private sector. It is clear that microchip technology enables easier and greater exchange of information between cards and databases than simply the magnetic strip or the barcode. It can work two ways. Not only can more information on the chip be put into more and more databases and manipulated there but also it can go the other way around with additional information or categories of information being put on to the microchip itself. 
In question time today the Minister in charge of this bill Winston Peters said more than once that we should not worry because we already have microchips on our passports. That is enlightening for us because our passports now have our facial characteristics in a digital form primarily so that US Department of Homeland Security can download that information if we pass through an American airport so that it can compare that digital information with what is in its database. I think that that extension of information on microchips is the sort of area the Privacy Commissioner is talking about when she talks about function creep. 
It is important to recognise that there are different types of cards containing microchips. Having a bus card that debits according to one’s trips is very useful and the Greens are not opposed to that. It is not an ID card as such. What is different about the SuperGold card is that it is an ID card that has various information about the person. In this case of course it is useful to have a card that can be used to access various services but we have to be careful as we go down the track of what we use on that card to ensure it is not a Trojan Horse—a move towards a more generalised ID card covering everyone and containing all sorts of additional information that may undermine our privacy. 
 There have been huge debates overseas about ID cards that other Governments are trying to bring in like those being introduced by the Government in Britain at the present time. In Britain the cards are being brought in bit by bit explicitly as an ID card for people to use in a whole range of Government activities. First it is being brought in for new migrants and then it will be extended out to the whole population. The Greens are worried that that sort of thing could happen here with this function creep.