The HIC while supposedly remaining private has a record of every test, consultation and item number you have ever used. Insurance companies including life insurance, superannuation and health insurance, WorkCover etc compile huge dossiers on people. Many people now pay our health bills and visits to doctors and dentists by credit or debit cards. Anyone in the system who wants to find out what type of dental floss, medications, shrink and colonoscope you prefer only have to do a bit of collation and it's all there. What do you think ASIO does...call the Tooth Fairy? We will all have a separate medical card soon and it will contain even CT scan images. It can be done now. So maybe we will have two cards but eventually big brother will know what you eat for breakfast and how often you walk the dog because it is now possible by the satellites sitting above you now....smile...say cheese. It's all inevitable I am afraid.

If you have nothing to hide then there is nothing for them to see and they dont need to look. Go and catch some actual criminals instead of hassling the sheeple.

"The road to tyranny is paved with good intentions."

Freedom is not convenient. It requires effort and constant vigilance. Those who would give up liberty in the name of convenience dont deserve freedom.

Personally, l dont care about the why fors and where hows nor the diversionary rationalisations. My position is quite simple... stay the f out of my private affairs you nosey sanctamonious do gooding know-it-alls.

I wonder whether there will be a shoot-to-kill policy against those without an ID card...

I'd never before considered the Australian identity card an "issue" until I discovered first-hand how ineffective our privacy laws are.

A very dangerous woman, who from her (subpoenaed) psychiatrist’s notes appears to have tried to kill a man a few years ago, harassed me out of my job because I refused to date her and has continued to harass me since. After some months of unemployment, I approached Centrelink but asked that a block be put on my file to prevent her finding out where I lived (I knew she worked for them). Their policy, however, is not to take preventative measures – a violation has to have already occurred before they will place a block on a file. Eventually they investigated and found she had, though I was told this unofficially and by this time, she had already left there. Officially, in accordance with their policy, they wouldn’t name her or even what information she stole.

The security of our private information is a complete bluff. I've done casual work in a federal government department. You get the warnings "we take this very seriously - you can be prosecuted, etc." but I know from experience that they don't take it seriously. They give you the standard line, which they've given me repeatedly - you are perfectly safe because our staff are trained and know not to abuse their access to our systems. If that was true, then why did it happen to me?

I don’t have sufficient space here to describe the investigative process in detail, but it’s weak. I also have good reason to believe, on the basis of recent experience, that process servers utilise friends and contacts to steal “private” information from “secure” databases to do their work.

I now provide as little information as possible to organisations. At the moment I use a mailing address that isn't where I'm living and will eventually have a PO Box set up for a mailing address. None of them have my phone number and none of them ever will.

Australia ID card - not something I look forward to...

Bad news, AD - they'll still get your phone number. I've had numerous calls from what's now GE Capital Finance, over money my mother owed on her Myer Card when she died. I've moved twice in the 4 years since, and have always had an unlisted number. I don't live anywhere near my mother's old address. Scarier still, one of my son's friends, who IS living in mum's old house, got a call from them - they'd got his mobile number when he gave that address for his prepaid mobile phone service. They're watching very hard already, and won't a centralised data base make it ever so easy for them? Change your name to John Smith. It makes it that little bit harder to identify you.

Anomie - these people getting your phone number doesn't surprise me. I've had to change my number several times and don't even turn my phone on any more.

As part of the legal process, I had to serve documents on this woman. I didn't know where she lived or at this stage, worked. Legalaid advised me that I could get a process server who would find an address for her and serve the documents. The process server I spoke with asked me to tell her everything I knew about this woman. When I mentioned she was studying at a particular institution, she said that was good and that she knew someone who worked there...

Centrelink told me they could not investigate to see if unauthorised access had been made to my file unless I could name the person who had done it. Not having had anything to do with Centrelink since I received AUSTUDY some eight years ago (before they were Centrelink), you’d think any access in the past year would be suspicious. Apparently not.

Hypothetically, someone has personal information about you that they shouldn’t have - in your case a phone number. Possibly, the people who have your number hired a process server who knows someone who works for an agency who has your phone number in their system (eg. your telco). Unless you can name the company and the person working in it who might have violated your privacy, that person is essentially safe from any negative consequences for the violation. You would have to go to each agency who has your phone number and convince all of them to launch investigations which could link anyone who had accessed your file with the people who now have your number. Not going to happen.

The security of our private information is a complete bluff.

Reading Count Butterworth’s reply – I can assure you from personal experience that federal government departments do share information they have about individuals with each other and they don’t try to hide that fact. That doesn't bother me, but I thought it worth correcting.