Calls for Digital ID after NSW Club Data Breach

Sky News report that nearly half of Australia’s population had been affected by a data breach in the past 12 months. Responding to the NSW clubs data breach which exposed the identity of more than one million people former New South Wales Digital Minister Victor Dominello said:

Using paper and plastic credentials that were designed for last century in a digital age is clearly not fit for purpose. We need to be smarter in the way we deal with our personal information via digital ID. Plastic cards and paper birth certificates were never meant to be an identity document. What we need to build is a true digital identity that protects the privacy of sub-credentials.

Victor Dominello, Sky News, May 2024

The most recent leak involved the data scanned when people signed into the clubs, including facial recognition, driver’s license details, signatures and addresses. Identity experts say the capture of digital imagery is disturbing in the context of AI and deep fake technology. Companies like Microsoft are unveiling technology that takes a single digital image and coverts it into realistic video.

A drivers license is trying to do two things at once. It shows who you are, but also what you can do. Ultimately, a drivers license is an authority or permission to drive. An ID doesn’t have to give away all that personal information. A passport is just permission to move between ports. We are in a digital ID arms race, but the criminals have the advantage. They are using digital and we are using paper and plastic.

Victor Dominello, Sky News, May 2024

The process of buying and selling a car presents multiple opportunities for fraud and scams through the use of old forms of ID. AutoSettle is creating a platform to make buying and selling a car more secure while maintaining privacy of personal information or data that is not required to complete the transaction. Digital ID is a key part of the AutoSettle solution.