A serious scam is unfolding in Australia where government agency employees abused access and routinely searched Australia’s ID database for personal information. The Australian Police are now investigating allegations of ID fraud as a result of security breaches.



In all, there were 790 security breaches detected at government agency Centrepoint involving 600 staff. They were allegedly found to have inappropriately accessed databases containing citizens’ information. It can be noted here that the databases are part of government smart card project that will link medical, welfare, tax and other personal data on Australia’s 17 million citizens.



India is also planning a similar national database that will similar contain info about its huge population. Given the level of corruption and how easy to access similar things here, it raises a serious question regarding privacy issues. Besides, having such databases will mean that the possibility of electronic intrusions (hacking) cannot be ruled out entirely.



With many countries having such databases in place, it would be interesting to note if the governments of those countries did an investigation themselves. No one country is immune from such activities and we just got to know this with the Aussie revealation.



News