Germany's e-ID Cards Spark Privacy Debate

Posted 11/04/2010 at 8:24am | by Paul Lilly

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Germany has taken a giant leap of faith into the digital age by introducing electronic identity cards that store personal data on microchips, Reuters reports. These e-IDs make it easy for owners to verify their identity when shopping online and ultimately "increase the safety and convenience of e-business and e-commerce," the government says.

That all sounds well and fine, unless you're concerned about privacy. The problem many Germans have is that the e-ID cards simply store too much personal information, including date of birth, place of birth, address, biometric photo, and voluntary fingerprints. It's basically a digital goldmine for data thieves. Or Big Brother.

According to a recent survey, some 44 percent of German citizens feel weary about the new e-IDs, some of which Joahannes Caspar, head of Hamburg's data protection agency, attributes to German history, namely the Gestapo secret police of yesteryear. Yet others question the security of the new cards.

"The high degree of protection against forgery which German identity cards have enjoyed up until now is being unnecessarily undermined by the overhasty introduction of a large-scale project which is both conceptually weak and technically dubious," said Dirk Engling, spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club, a European organization of hackers.