Dyson Ruth: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dyson Ruth: Electronic Identity Verification Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6545. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I did not realise that the member who has just resumed his seat Chris Auchinvole was going to do so so rapidly. I want to begin by just endorsing his comments. I did refer earlier to the Minister of Internal Affairs and the members of the Government Administration Committee and the officials and I want to just reinforce that point. Some people would look at this bill the Electronic Identity Verification Bill and say: “Well hmm?”. Perhaps they would not get very excited about it. I suppose it is not a bill that you would get really excited about but that does not mean it is not important and it certainly does not mean that you should not apply a lot of rigour to it and ensure that the anxiety that we referred to earlier is considered seriously and dealt with even if we do not think it is entirely appropriate to do legislative amendments or frame legislation on terms of unwarranted anxiety. But we want a system where people’s confidence will grow. We want the benefits of electronic identification to be given to Government departments agencies and individuals but we also want people who are using the system to have their confidence grow because of the rigidity of the system the rigour of the system so that we are not likely to get the sorts of breaches that we have been talking about earlier in the debate. Also if there is some breach appropriate penalties should be dished out to those who breach it. 
I want to refer now to clause 61 which is the only clause in the bill that has an amendment from the Hon Chris Tremain. It really draws further on the comments that my colleague Kris Faafoi was making in relation to Keith Ng who is the—what was the term he used? 
Kris Faafoi 
: “Citizen journalist”. 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: Citizen journalist. There you are; that is an interesting term. He is a blogger. He is a person who has strongly and competently held views and expresses them through social media and other outlets. I want to correct the deputy chair of the Government Administration Committee. The kiosk system was not hacked. There was no hacking involved. It did not involve anything that bordered on anything illegal. The system was used in the manner it was intended to be used but it delivered a whole lot of information that should not have been delivered to the people who were accessing it. So they did not hack into the system; they just accessed it and kept putting in the details that they were asked to put in and they suddenly got a whole lot of information that breached other people’s privacy. 
The point that Kris Faafoi was making is that if you read clause 61—it is talking about protection from liability—subclause (1) says: “Subsections (1A) and (1B) apply to an act done or omitted—(a) by the chief executive or an employee or agent of the department; and (b) in the course of—(i) performing functions or duties or exercising powers under this Act; or (ii) purporting to perform functions or duties or exercise powers under this Act.” and subclause (1A) says: “Neither the chief executive nor the employee or agent is under any criminal liability for the act.” The point that Kris Faafoi was making was to ask whether this has any bearing on the example that he used where Keith Ng went into a legitimate public space of Work and Income and without any hacking or otherwise unauthorised or illegal actions or engagement with the Work and Income computer system was able to access a whole lot of information that was personal and private to other people and should not have been shared. But he was not accessing it illegally; he was just following due process as I understand it. There does not seem to be anything in this clause at all to respond to that situation. 
I think the question that Kris Faafoi raised with the Minister in the chair the Hon Amy Adams is worthy of some consideration. The select committee did not consider it and that was for a very simple reason: that incident had not occurred it had not happened and it was not in the public domain. We did not know about it until after the select committee had deliberated on it. As Chris Auchinvole alluded to given the serious attention that we gave to what appears to be quite an innocent and small bill I know that our select committee would have given it further consideration in terms of the protection from liability that should be accorded to Mr Ng.