Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Recording of NRIC No to identify a person

Dear Outreach, PDP Commission

Thank you for conducting the briefing and for sending the presentation materials to me.

I suggest the PDP Commission to consider the following suggestions.

a) Review your regulations to allow the use of NRIC No to be recorded into computer systems as a means of identifying a person. This should be allowed for both the private sector, as it is allowed in the public sector (which you indicate as being allowed "by law".

b) This will save the country a lot of money in changing computer systems to avoid the recording of NRIC No as a means of identifying a person. Many of the participants at the briefing are worried about the cost of conversion and the recurrent cost of a less efficient means of identifying a person.

c) One participant sitting next to me agreed with my comments. He commented that "we are going backwards" with the regulation to forbid the recording of NRIC No as a means of identification.

d) The regulation can state that only the NRIC No can be retrieved by scanning the NRIC for building management and other access systems. The other personal information stored on the NRIC cannot be captured. It is easier to make this change in the computer system, rather than to create another form of identification using a combination of name, partial NRIC No, etc. The use of a new form of identification is costly and inefficient..

e) The use of NRIC No to identify a person uniquely should be allowed for lucky draws, membership systems and other purposes where a person has to be identified uniquely.

f) There is no need to fear that the NRIC No can be used to authenticate a person. The authentication has to be done in some other ways, such as checking the photo in the NRIC against the holder or the use of a password, PIN or 2FA for online access and telephone authentication. Leave it to the business entity.

g) I agree with the regulation or law against the retention of the NRIC card.

Thank you.

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