Faafoi Kris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6532. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 It is always a pleasure to follow Mr Auchinvole. As he started with a pop culture and film reference I would like to do the same and remind everyone of that movie in the early 2000s  
Enemy of the State 
. It is a good movie where Will Smith a simple US lawyer had his identity stolen. Although that was a beaten-up Hollywood story there is serious concern— 
Andrew Little 
: I thought it was a documentary! 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: —it was not a documentary it was a Hollywood film—out in the community and tension in the community. As my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson mentioned now we are living in a much increased digital age people are very concerned about the worry of identity theft. We have all received those emails from the ASB bank or whatever bank you may be a customer of asking for your details. We know to just delete them but unfortunately there are some people out there who do respond to them and find themselves having their bank accounts cleaned out. 
I want to just reiterate also at the beginning a theme that a number of my colleagues have mentioned and that is that the journey of the Electronic Identity Verification Bill would have been much different if it had happened in the context of recent events around the security of information at a number of Government departments. They have been mentioned and I will revisit them later. I would imagine that if this bill had gone through the select committee process in that context there would have been a lot more opposition and scrutiny of the details of this bill— 
Andrew Little 
: A lot more evidence. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: —a lot more evidence and a lot more submissions than just the 12 that the Government Administration Committee received. Kudos to the select committee. Apparently it worked well to ensure that this legislation was improved and it has arrived as Mr Auchinvole mentioned in a non-partisan fashion before Parliament in a much better state than when it arrived at the first reading. 
Ruth Dyson did say that there was some tension between the digital age and concern around privacy but I think there is also a fair bit of concern in the community around the digital age and frustration amongst the public at having to repeatedly physically offer up documentation around their identity. I know we have all probably had people in our electorate offices who are sick and tired of having to repeatedly supply that whether it be their address their birth certificate or their marriage certificate. As Trevor Mallard mentioned this is something that is being rolled out to make sure that we can improve efficiency relieve some frustration in the community and streamline the process when we are dealing with the likes of Births Deaths and Marriages in the Department of Internal Affairs. 
I want to point to the bill and to Part 1 clause 3(1)—the purpose clause—“The purpose of this Act is to facilitate secure interactions (particularly online interactions) between individuals on the one hand and participating agencies on the other.” I just want to focus in on those two words “secure interactions” and take stock of the recent events that have happened with the Ministry of Social Development and the kiosks that Keith Ng accessed. He managed to download from those kiosks 7000 documents which were publicly available to anyone who walked into a Work and Income office around the country. For this igovt system to work our public need absolute confidence that their basic details are going to be held securely within the departments concerned. Although Mr Auchinvole did have a bit of a gibe I think it is absolutely appropriate for the Opposition to point out that the Government should take stock of what happened in those instances and look very closely as to the security of the information that is concerned here. 
When we have got a large ministry like the Ministry of Social Development having publicly available kiosks where 7000 documents can be accessed by anyone off the street—and we are talking about the names of people who have committed suicide invoices medical records—you have to start questioning the capability of the Government to manage information within our Public Service. That is a fair question to ask—absolutely fair. And you put that in the context of other ministries that have come out and absolutely and utterly—and rightly so—confessed that they have had privacy breaches as well. I understand that the Ministry of Justice came to the fore and said: “Look we’ve had a potential breach as well.” My colleague Dr David Clark has talked about the 6300 individuals affected by a privacy breach in the Inland Revenue Department. 
I think it is absolutely appropriate in the context of this bill which we support and hope that the Government can bring in and get right that we ask the questions as the Opposition to make sure that the security of this information is going to be appropriate. There is as I said massive concern out there in the community about the privacy of personal information and about identity theft. I think that the confidence of the public has been shaken by those misgivings about the Ministry of Social Development and I think they are disappointed that this could happen to such a large extent. The nature of the information that was let out through those kiosks and the sheer number of documents that have been accessed really did shake the confidence of the public in the ability of the Government to protect this basic information. 
This legislation is a sign of the times. We are going to have more and more of this type of information as we are well and truly into the digital age. As our lives change to have more online transactions we are going to have more and more legislation in this House to govern those transactions and how we interact online so we need to get these kinds of things right. That is why we in this Chamber although we are standing in support of this bill need to make sure that we ask the appropriate questions so that the public out there who are going to be interacting with the Department of Internal Affairs and important departments like Births Deaths and Marriages and Passports have absolute confidence that their information is being securely looked after. 
Identity theft is a major worry. We actually had a member of a former Parliament in here who many many years ago committed what I believe was a case of identity theft. Identity theft is not new but I think it is due to the fact that we are living in an age where information can be much more easily accessed online that it is becoming much more pervasive in our community. That is why I think this bill is certainly apt. 
The ability to opt out of the system is important because although I think about 86 percent of New Zealanders are doing something online not everyone is confident that they want to put all their details—whether they be bank account details birth details or anything like that—online. So we need to make sure that there is the option the ability for those who are not confident to transact on the internet to opt out and to be able to do things more traditionally—more old-school as you might say—to ensure that their needs can be looked after in an age when much more is going to be done online. 
We also need to think about those people who because of their financial ability cannot transact online. I know that there are certainly a lot of families in my community in the electorate of Mana who do not have the ability to have internet accessibility who do not have a computer at home. We are hoping that we can make that much more accessible for them but until then they do not have the ability to transact online with the likes of the Department of Internal Affairs so we need to make sure that the ability is still there for them to do what they have traditionally done—some may find that frustrating—and be able to interact offline with the Department of Internal Affairs. 
Also as my colleague Ruth Dyson said as aged-care spokesperson for the Labour Party there are a lot of older people in New Zealand who although they may be proficient online and they may be able to do some simple things online would not be confident to be able to do the likes of the transactions with the Department of Internal Affairs that we are talking about here. So we need to make sure that they have the ability to do that. 
Just to conclude we do support this bill. We are very concerned in the context of recent events around the privacy breaches that have happened under this Government’s watch with Work and Income and with the Accident Compensation Corporation. One that I have not mentioned is the Ministry of Education and Novopay which is obviously a big concern. Those members over there will know that they have got teachers in their electorates who are very upset about privacy breaches and also their inability to get paid. So in that context we hope that the Government does take heed of the warnings that this party has made in terms of making sure they get the security of information right and making sure they do that properly.