George Orwell was way ahead of his time with his novel “1984”. If things carry on as now, his dark predictions are getting closer and closer to becoming a reality by 2084.
Terrorism is the main excuse of why we are all now being treated as potential criminals with our fingerprints and eye irises soon to become a staple item in our passports.
And that is not all. Reading about the second reading of the Central Registry Bill gave me the creeps.
The Central Registry will amalgamate what are now the Public and Land Registries. “The Bill aims at consolidating into one law the separate pieces of legislation relating to Public Registry and Land Registry operations, eliminating the dichotomy between the two.”
I love the way the inclusion of much more private information to the public domain is being presented as going to be so beneficial to us, starting with our health.
Each new identity card to be introduced next year would contain an electronic chip containing the individual’s health record, Communications Minister Austin Gatt told Parliament on Monday.
We go from one extreme to the other. For years I was appalled at the lackadaisical way health records were kept here, and I welcome an IT database which would link the Hospital to GP’s records, but storing our health records on the new ID cards is more than a bit excessive. Are we transferring from a nanny state to a Big Brother one?
How many people need to know your state of health? I would have thought that would be your doctor, the health clinics and Mater Dei.
And even that should be a matter of choice, not something imposed by government, unless your state of health makes you dangerous to society.
Yet, what Minister Austin Gatt said in Parliament was “the information would be linked to Mater Dei Hospital, health clinics and, in time, to general practitioners’ clinics.”
“In time”? I would have thought that GPs would be the first priority, ensuring the people who matter have the relevant information, not anyone else you present your ID card to.
As to this information, it is relevant only to the Health sector (hospitals, doctors and clinics) and that is where the information should be based and not “linked”.
Why does information regarding individuals’ health need to be recorded in what will be the Central Registry? Is that not prying? All the Registry needs are statistics not how many operations, heart attacks or blood tests etc. etc. an individual has had.
It got worse as I read on. “Eventually the individual’s banking information could be stored on the ID card”.
Also, “The new Central Registry would lead to researchers being able to find to whom a residence or field belonged. The law would give owners legal surety of title.”
The article jumped from our health to our monetary information and ascertaining whom a field belonged to. Maybe that was how it was presented in Parliament.
We are suddenly dealing with a whole load of complex private information - our health, our money and our property - in one ‘tidy’ public package.
Are our individual health and financial situations to become accessible to researchers if the Bill goes through?
The whole project is about “modernising the Registry” and “better accessibility of information”.
Modernising the Registry is all well and good, and people who are abusing property regulations should be dealt with, but who is going to benefit most from this “accessibility of information”?
It does rather look like a “catch all” ploy. It reminded me of the form I had to fill out to prove my elderly mother lives in Valletta to exempt me from the CVA fee.
As Minister Dalli rightly said, “When analysing what information was to be included in the system, one had to consider what it was going to be used for.”
So I question why he went on to say, “Through one’s ID number, a doctor would know what tests one would have already undergone, the results and what needed to be done”. Surely that is information that should be available through the Hospital database linked to GP’s clinics and not a Central Registry and ID card.
I was rather baffled by a news story saying “Family doctors have given the thumbs up to electronic health records” and that the Association of Private Family Doctors (APFD) president Anthony Azzopardi said the group was “all for it”.
Do they mean the information on ID cards, or just immediate access to hospital records? That was not at all clear in the article. Since health records are meant to be highly confidential, I would have expected at least some caution from the APFD.
I was never in favour of ID cards in the first place, I baulked every time I was asked to present mine and only did so if it was absolutely needed, since I found their relevance to a tiny island like ours hardly necessary.
Everyone seems to know who everyone is and most of their business anyway. But of course now that we are part of the European Union and IDs are replacing passports it is a different story. However, I still do not want all my personal details available to anyone.
During his intervention, Minister Dalli said, “One had to ensure that systems would have the necessary safeguards to avoid prying, prevent computer fraud and identity theft. Methods had to be established as to what information was to be accessible and by whom”. Absolutely.
Yet, according to the report, he also said “It was useful for one and all if the country had a common database that would include holistic information on individuals and property.”
Is this also going to include how many nights we go out, where we go, how many lovers, husbands/wives or partners we have had and what movies and TV programmes we watch?
We already have invasive cameras, which might deter criminals but also record the movement of every single individual on the street. Are we going to be tagged next?
As Graham Crocker commented on The Times website “Lets hope we don’t find RFID’s within these new ID Cards. For those who don’t know what RFIDS are, they are cheap chips that give out a person’s location.”

pamelapacehansen@gmail.com