Civil liberties groups have raised “serious concerns” about Government plans to make Public Services Cards an acceptable form of age verification.<\/p>\n
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) and Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) say extending the card\u2019s use as a generalised form of national identification serves to “compound the legal issues with the card rather than resolving them”.<\/p>\n
Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary secured Cabinet sign-off for priority drafting of a Bill which would allow a Public Services Card holder to use it as a form of identity when engaging with a body that is not specified under existing legislation – such as banks, credit unions, or utility companies.<\/p>\n
The Government said: “Currently, should a non-specified body accept the Public Services Card as a form of identity verification, they would be guilty of an offence.<\/p>\n
“This amendment will allow a cardholder to use – of their own volition – their Public Services Card as a form of identity in, for instance, their local credit union, the bank, or with a utility provider.”<\/p>\n
It would see a cardholder choosing to include their date of birth on their card so they can use it as a means of age verification.<\/p>\n
‘A de facto national identity card’<\/p>\n
However, the ICCL said this comes after the Data Protection Commission (DPC) found the Department of Employment and Social Protection unlawfully processed the facial biometric data of up to 70% of the population over a 15-year period.<\/p>\n
Digital Rights Ireland chairman Dr TJ McIntyre said the card was introduced for social welfare purposes but was now being turned into “a de facto national identity card”.<\/p>\n
He said: “There has been no public debate about introducing a national identity card and no proper legislative framework.”<\/p>\n
Olga Cronin, senior policy officer at Enforce, ICCL, said: “Despite the warnings, the Government is allowing the PSC to be turned into an unlegislated, badly planned national identity card system without considering the data protection implications.<\/p>\n
“It is at risk of normalising unregulated mass surveillance and undermining public trust at a very sensitive time.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Government has been exploring the possible implementation of an age verification requirement for social media.<\/p>\n
T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris said a “digital wallet” would be the next step in such a move, and a public consultation process on the policy is under way.<\/p>\n
The proposed digital wallet app will be a place to securely access versions of documents such as a birth certificate or driving licence for quick access, verification, and EU compatibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Civil liberties groups have raised “serious concerns” about Government plans to make Public Services Cards an acceptable form…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-399433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}