New South Wales minister for customer service and digital government Victor Dominello has hit out at the rampant harvesting of sensitive personal identifiers like driver’s licences revealed by the Optus hack, putting state agencies into triage mode to mop up the mess.
Dominello said customers who were notified by Optus “that both their Driver Licence number and their Driver Licence card number have been compromised are strongly advised to apply for a replacement licence.”
“Behind the scenes, the NSW Department of Customer Service, Transport for NSW, Cyber Security NSW, ID Support and Registry of Births Death and Marriages — are working with Optus to make the process of re-issuing of NSW identity documents as seamless as possible.”
However, the fact that NSW driver’s licences, which use biometric photos and can be put into digital wallets as an official virtual credential, have been dragged in potentially very large numbers into the Optus hack saga has clearly hit a nerve with the digital minister.
It’s still unclear who will pay for potentially millions of replacement licences, with consumers currently on the hook pending Optus or state governments shelling out.
Dominello has left the door open to financial assistance saying “this is another issue that Optus and Transport are working through — ideally it should have been sorted by now — I will hopefully have an update tomorrow.”
There are also ongoing issues with what evidence consumers need to front to Service NSW to prove they are data theft victims of the Optus hack.
Dominello has been a key proponent of the introduction of digital identities to harden how identity credentials are shared and verified, holding a fire to the feet of the federal counterparts to get a national system running.
The Albanese government is yet to indicate whether it will support the present digital identity program left behind by the previous government and initially created by the Digital Transformation Office.
Dominello has continued his criticism of identifier harvesting by default.
“When we hand over copies of our driver’s licence — we ‘over-share’ personal information that could potentially compromise our security,” Dominello said on LinkedIn, pointing to an earlier missive he wrote about Web 3 and its identity challenges.
“For example look at these plastic drivers licences. When a bank, a car hire company or any other organisation asks you for a copy of your plastic licence — what happens to that paper copy. I imagine in most cases the paper goes into a metal filing cabinet and thereafter potentially into the cloud,” Domiello said in that previous post
“The point is — once you have handed over your piece of paper, you have essentially lost control. That bit of paper contains private and personal information such as your date of birth, your address and even your licence class. Now whilst your licence class may be relevant for a hire car company — is it really relevant for a bank?”
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