Well Leslie, you are certainly in a panic about the card.
Without really knowing I'll bet there will be catagories for protection purposes,
for judges, police, etc etc.
It would not be unreasonable for some people to be able to apply for that catagory.

I have another worry for you. With oil depletion, petrol rationing will
probably become necessary. There is a suggestion that the card be used
to allocate a yearly supply of petrol. Then under the Transition Protocol
each time you buy petrol the amount is deducted. Each year the depletion
percentage would reduce your allocation. You could buy or sell unused
allocation from other card holders.
Just anyone having a card reader would not give access to all the data
if it was encrypted.
Encryption can be that tight that you will be an old lady in a nursing
home before it got unpacked.

this govt does not need cards to invade privacy, as they do it already in sublte ways, and most recent was the Senate enquiry [whitewash] into Child Support Agency getting new "Jackboots at Dawn" powers

I thought my submission was KISS and to the point but another trumped mine with a simple truth that the REASON it is so easy for the govt to INVADE privacy is that Howard follows a former great leader

"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think"
Adolf Hitler

it's no more complex than that

Yah, vy not a zimple number on the wrist mit metallic ink?

I'm opposed to a national identity card as well. Total invasion of privacy.

To understand Privacy abuse you need to get up earlier than Howard [who is up at sparrow's] because he has simply reversed the Privacy Act in the media and in his agencies

It has nothing to do with encryption but about when can the govt get, store, refer to your information AT ALL. It is all stated in the Privacy Act in simple terms, essentially that unless info is required by an Act of Parliament, then it MUST remain private [unless you are stupid enough to GIVE it to some govt department]

Moreover the "sister Act" to the Constitution is Acts Interpretation Act [1901] and it says even Howard can't just amend the Privacy Act for no good reason. So Howard is doing what he has done from day 1 and has erected "firewalls" [eg the Privacy Commissioner] in all departments and of course in the courts to stop people exercise rights, eg in 7 years only 1 Privacy case [Palmer vs CSA] at Fed Magistrate Court, and even it is a Barry Crocker

So as Kirby J said in Harrington, "depart from those pre-conditions and what is done can not stand AS IT IS FORBIDDEN BY THE CONSTITUTION"

But bottom line [as per orig post] is biggest help to Howard is simply as Hitler said: "it is most fortunate for governments that the people do not think"

I like the idea that key medical information is encrypted on the card so that your life could be saved in an emergency, however the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

In Michael Chrichton's book NEXT, genetic information is sent to an insurance company that notes the holder of this gene has a genetic predisposition to heart attack, oops! this increases our health insurance risk, deny the person health insurance, thus person loses job. Far fetched, no. The author has an appendix [to a novel!] where he spells out the lack of laws protecting genetic material, privacy of medical records.

We don't have effective privacy laws in place in Australia and when you read Jocelynne Scutt's piece about the outsourcing of welfare functions to the churches you see that there is even less control over the data. The "employment industry" hires a casualised workforce who are only marginally more secure than the people on welfare and they will be very corruptible. The "employment industry" workers are often untrained and ignorant of the functions they are to provide and the legislative framework within which they operate.

Then of course our elected masters are hell bent on offshoring our databases to third world countries where workers earn annual wages of $5000. Very cheap to tap into all that information.

Contrast that to the current controls over Medicare data, where the data can only be viewed by Medicare, and maybe doctors and hospitals.