Access Card Submission

[14 Sep 06] Lockstep's submission to the Access Card Consumer & Privacy Taskforce has been released.

Lockstep made a detailed submission to the Consumer & Privacy Taskforce; Lockstep submission (or alternatively, the file is available at Smartcards).
Executive Summary (extract)

To ensure that the Access Card delivers maximum value to the public and to the government, Lockstep recommends that the following unique capabilities of smartcard technology be more fully factored into the policy formulation and system architecture:

— Mutual Authentication: smartcards should be the clearly preferred means for accessing sensitive services online, to protect consumers against phishing, pharming, web fraud and spam, as well as identity theft.
— De-centralisation of data management: fraudulent card use can generally be better detected by the card itself rather than by data mining all health & welfare transactions, resulting in better consumer privacy protection, less invasion into routine transactions, and better system performance.
— Multiple identifiers: smartcards can store and manage diverse consumer identifiers, to preserve their existing relationships with backend schemes and systems, and thus
resist unnecessary data linkages.
— Anonymity: smartcards can encrypt identifiers to protect against eavesdropping, and to "firewall" business conducted in different domains using the one card.