Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — Privacy Commissioner

I want to address the role of the Privacy Commissioner. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner does extremely important work, and in its latest report it refers to this being a dangerous time for privacy: “The potential for unwarranted intrusions into the privacy of individuals is rising rapidly, as are the demands of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Rapid growth of information technologies means there are ever more means and opportunities by which the right to privacy can be compromised.”

We have been having discussions in this Parliament about the microchipping of dogs. One issue that has come up in one of the forums hosted by the Privacy Commissioner is the microchipping of people. This was in a paper by University of Otago Professor Paul Roth, about workplace privacy issues raised by radio frequency ID technology. He refers to the Mexican Attorney-General microchipping the arms of 160 of his employees with rice-sized radio frequency ID tags as a security measure in terms of access to certain buildings. He goes on to talk about not necessarily the implanting of microchips but their use on cards to track employees in the workplace, and the serious privacy problems that ensue.

It is difficult for workers to control that, at all, unlike some of the other things the Privacy Commissioner here in New Zealand deals with—for example, what is put on our credit records. We can check what is on our Baycorp record. The Privacy Commissioner has set up a whole code in that respect. At least, we can find out what is going on and can correct things.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

The Greens are concerned that Governments around the world and employers are picking up the use of intrusive technologies like radio frequency ID chips, and other identifying and tracking systems. Recently, facial recognition chips have been added to our passports, and our Government’s immigration review document projects other biometric identifiers, such as fingerprinting and iris recognition systems, being brought into use. Such biometric identifiers on passports, combined with other personal information, are the track the Blair Government is using to bring in British ID cards. The Howard Government is pushing ahead with what is effectively an Australian ID card—one card that can be used to access the full range of Government entitlements and other services.

Of course, all this information links back to Government databases that are extending and being linked up all the time. As the Privacy Commissioner reports, the amount of personal information disclosed from one Government database to another went up from 10 million items 3 years ago to 21 million items now. The number of data-matching programmes operating between New Zealand Government departments has more than doubled, to 36.

The privacy of our thoughts and communications is under challenge as never before. Google’s Gmail scans the contents of its subscribers’ emails to enable it individually to customise advertisements. The details of the phone calls and emails of millions of Americans have been illegally recorded by the US National Security Agency, as we found out recently. This data-gathering process was helped—unfortunately—by the phone and email information pouring into the United States from the New Zealand satellite communications interception station at Waihopai, near Blenheim. In this morning’s Dominion Post, we read that one local woman’s bank account was emptied after a trojan computer program that monitored her keystrokes was able to steal her passwords.

The Privacy Commissioner has an important role in monitoring all of this. There are Governments around the world that misuse this technology, and we have to prepare for the possibility of our having a worse Government in New Zealand at some point. We have to have systems that will prevent it from misusing its ability to find out about our identities, track our movements and communications, and put all this information in databases.

Report noted.

I understand that members do not wish to debate any other entities. The debate on the performance of Crown entities, public organisations, and State enterprises has therefore concluded. I shall report the debate to the House.

Report adopted.