If you work from the premise that if "they" want to find out something about you then they will.
If however you are one of the 20 million then you will never be noticed.
It would be simple to encrypt the data separately for each function.
ie medical people would have the key for the medical segment.
Centrelink would have the key for employment or pension matters.
The resources Dept wouold have the key for your petrol usage. eh eh !
The tax Dept would have the key for your income data.
ands so on and on. It is so obvious that I cannot imagine that that is not what they will do.

A writer in Melbourne’s Herald Sun warned last October 22 that Australia stood “at the cusp of a dire new phase in its history” and called on people to “resist a new regime of tyranny”.

“I do not want to live in a police state and that is exactly what we will become if police are able to jail, tag with electronic bracelets and restrict the activities of people all without laying a single charge.”
Labor and Liberal are following Bush and politically are not that much different. Many of the draconian laws passed behind the backs of people in the last few years revolve around people being arrested without charge. In this devious way you cannot defend yourself if you do not know what you are being charged with.
Due to the high levels of wage and social innequality this creates tensions whereby democracy cannot be maintained. Moreover Howard and Rudd are terrified of workers finding out the hidden agenda of exploitation contained in the Workplace Relations Laws which is not immediately apparent. What must be taken into consideration too is that we pay for the hospitals, Medicare and schools etc., two to three times over. Whilst the governments carries out a wrecking operation against them sometimes giving them to their cronies. Howard or Rudd seek to suppress all opposition. What is their history but workers have no rights and the employers all rights.

Nothing to hide? So no need to look. Problem solved.

Another solution in search of a question.

Alleged concerns, like address confidentiality, l dont buy. Motivated persons (like scarey murderers) wont rely on the public record to find out where you live, there are age old ways to do that. $500 to a private investigator will flush out almost anyones's whereabouts. Those sort of people dont really buy the 'lm a potential victim of violence, sniff, sniff' routines. Leslie, l've seen you run that act and you dont do it very well, its a bit easy to see past.

Seems easy enuff to avoid the implications of this card, initially at least, eventually all exceptions will be closed and all will get marked, no doubt shortly after birth. Linking to govt handouts is a front, easy to get over the line. The thing will eventually be used in myriad ways. All to assert control.

Privacy is already DEAD. Killed by convenience and complacency long ago.

The claim to privacy is a very thin one, quite illusory. Look no further than the playbook attempts to use the children, oh the children, to justify the authors contention. Predictable and pretty lame. Clearly, anyone truely concerned for the safety of their children would never expose them to potential harm thru one's actions in the first place, then again, thats what justification is for.

Author can see where this is going ('fingerprinted' at birth) and it could throw the area of her activism into chaos. Maybe thats why she's also advocating (not in this article, but elsewhere) for the notion of social fathe..., l mean parents.

l was very concerned about systemic bludgeoning of privacy a couple of decades ago. Realised two things... vast majority dont care (certain death) and there are ways around the beast.

That article was a pretty good eulogy to the long since dead notion of public privacy by default.

Now, Les, c'mon tell us whats really going on.

oh, yeah, and some web site will have encryption key cracks too.

trade 215; I think you are living a conspirosy theory life.
Probably been "cracking" too many computer games.

I am not talking about that sort of encryption.
Any encryption can be cracked, given enough time with a brute force
solution, but you will probably be dead by the time "they" crack it.
What you are worrying about is that "they" will put in a profile and
it will pop out you. Gord, how paranoid can you get ?
Why would they want to pop you out of the database ?
Any parameters they put into a database that size will produce hundreds of hits.
If they already know about you they will know the brand of toothpaste
you use. If they don't know about you, what the hell ?

Some people no longer see reds under the bed, they see ASIO hand in
hand with the CIA. I would worry more about identity theft.
Do you properly destroy your personal paperwork, or do you just dump
into the bin the night before the garbos come ?

this sounds like just one more way of allowing hackers access to our private info.
every day we use our market cards to get sale prices on a can of tuna, we go and take money from bank machines with our atm cards, we pay tolls with electronic devices attached to our cars, our cell phones can tell within 20' where we are at any given time. We can buy a Cooper Mini that has a fancy key fob that makes electronic street signs say hello to us by name. All new passports have the same chip embedded with all of our info. Go to the Apple store to buy a computer, and you do not even need to go to the cash register to pay, it is all done via wireless. and if your computer is acting up...well you get on line and an unseen person in another country will jump right onto your computer and fix it for you. We have become lax with our most personal details. Our egos have played into this hodge podge of information sharing as well, just this year police have made over 200 arrests from "MYSPACE", and not just your garden varity pedophiles, but theives showing off their take, "YOUTUBE", "MYSTUFF" all a hit. got a website??
We don't even need private eyes any more, we spend so much time telling the world of our exploits and sharing photos of our kids on line, we forget that little brother can be watching us as well. Have you ever been in an elevator in a hospital an overheard something said about "the cancer patient in 311" or passed by a desk at the bank to see someones account information sitting there? How about your alum card or old student ID? where has that been, has it been in a Coke machine on campus? have you paid for lunch used it in a copy machine? now that students can have a declining balance attached to the ID non university venders have all you info as well. Think about where you have been this week....