Here Is EXACTLY Why The PSC Card is Illegal!

Let's cut to the chase. No crap. Straight to the point.

Regina Doherty says that the introduction of the PSC was so that people can facilitate the use of Social Services. Got it? That's was and still is, the sales pitch. If it was for just that reason there would have been far less hassle and actual laws broken.

In reality as many people have found out, the card has been shoved down the throats of hundreds of thousands of people who do NOT wish to facilitate of actual Social Welfare Department services. Try applying for a renewal of a taxi license, a building permit, apply for a passport, etc? You are told that you have to have a PSC card in order to get these other department services. Think about it - those and far more have got NOTHING to do with the Department of Social Welfare. On this legal point alone, the Data Protection Office has made it clear that when the Fine Gael party introduced this card, the legal reason put into law, was just so that Employment and Social Welfare Services could be accessed only!

On that point of law, the Data Protection Office has pointed out that as OTHER departments are insisting people going to them must have this card, their request, as is the need for this card to be applied for and actually presented to them, is illegal in law. To facilitate of other services, it is not in law that it's a requirement. If something is not in law, then trying to demand something outside the law - guess what - is illegal. It's why Shane Ross TD and his department wanted nothing to do with it! There are 140+ other departments and sections...

You are not supposed to kop all this.

The Fine Gael party has been very clever in trying to dodge around this issue. They state the PSC is "a system that will make it easier and more efficient for the public to access public services and will assist in the elimination of fraud" - and that's fine and dandy if that was what they put into law - but they did NOT! Remember, the PSC was legislated for just Social Welfare Services. It's a legal point - but a very important one. It is on this very legal point that the Data Protection Office stands and has made quiet clear. The law is supposed to apply to everyone. After all, it's your personal information that Fine Gael is playing footloose with!

Another illegality centers around the length of time the government department is holding onto our data. Don't take our word for it. Checkout the rules and regulations yourself independently. Fine Gael here too, is breaking laws.

You are not supposed to kop all this.

National Identity Card In All But Name...

The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP) has publicly expressed the view that efficient public service development and delivery in Ireland will be inhibited if the State does not introduce a “single electronic identification scheme” (Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection debate - Thursday, 22 Feb 2018, Public Services Card: Discussion).

So the Dept of DEASP is now trying to illegal back door a “single electronic identification scheme” - yes - a national identity card in all but name. In order to skirt around the title "National Identity card" they have instead come up with the wording “single electronic identification scheme”. Same thing - different name. What's the fuss about that? It's professionally assessed to actually unconstitutional (illegal) and there is other serious issues. See HERE. The renaming of items for PR is nothing new to Fine Gael. Instead of saying "EU Army", they and those creating one with them, have hidden it behind another wording called "PESCO".

You are not supposed to kop all this.

More Fine Gael Is Not Disclosing.

To quote direct from the report that Fine Gael has had now for over a year in draft and full format... The Data Protection Office writes in it's forward, the card...

"...has remarkably little by way of meaningful real-world application. Notably, no public sector body has invested in the technology capable of reading the chip that contains the encrypted elements of the Public Sector Identity dataset on the card. Exceptionally, a special variant of the card with its own separate chip has been created for those who avail of free travel. However, even that chip - and what is read from it - forms part of the National Transport Authority’s integrated ticketing specification rather than the PSC itself."

In other words, the card has no real word application (other than to build up an illegal national database on every citizen) and worse, some departments (who are not legally supposed to be asking for it) are not even able to use it unless they have more specialised equipment to access another variant of the PSC that Fine Gael has also not told the public further exists! This all begs questions about the €64+ Million public money that has been spent to create this illegal operating and failing setup?

You are not supposed to kop all this.

The PSC Will Eliminate Fraud.

Really? It's best you read THIS. At one stage Fine Gael tried to PR that the €64+ million will save money. They then tried to claim that €2.5 Million Euro was recovered though it's use. The amount turned out to be far less - and further in fact, this was "due to other control measures to detect fraud and overpayments". See HERE.

Had the €2.5 Million claim been even true, it would have taken another 24 years approximately for the card to just pay for it's introduction costs - but guess what...

You are not supposed to kop all this.

From the use of other measures to eliminate fraud, only 35 cases of identity fraud have actually been prosecuted to date in 2018. From the card? Still waiting...

You are not supposed to kop all this.

The SAFE Aspect.

To again quote the Data Protection Report FG has tried to long hide

"...In reality, the backbone of the project is a form of citizen registration system. That system is based on a nationally developed standard called the “Standard Authentication Framework Environment (SAFE)”.

"DEASP requires any individual who is to be issued with a PSC to present themselves in person at specified government offices, to bring a range of supporting identity and other documentation with them, to submit to a face-to-face interview, and to have a high-quality photo taken on-site and a recording of their signature stored."

(Why all this if it's not a national identity card? Wait, it's just legally for accessing social welfare services!)

"A facial recognition system has been implemented to match new photographs of individuals taken against the population of photographs already stored..."

So now we are talking about a bio-metric facial recognition (more defined HERE) system. Something that is not legal yet in Ireland. It's outside the law! So it's illegal.

You are not supposed to kop all this.

"The SAFE system and terminology is not explicitly referenced in any legislation..."

"...social welfare legislation makes no such explicit provision regarding the consequences that may flow for individuals transacting with public sector bodies other than DEASP."

You are not supposed to kop all this.

"A further key provision relied on by DEASP in relation to the PSC project is Section 241 (of the Social Welfare Act 2005); that section has been amended 28 times by 11 enactments."

...And they still managed to make a complete expensive balls of it!

You are not supposed to kop all this.

The Department Of Education.

"By way of observation in relation to published information about bodies other than DEASP that require the PSC, we note that the DEASP website indicates that the PSC will soon be required to  make an appeal to the Department of Education in relation to the provision of access to school transport schemes. What is striking about the current system of school transport appeals is that, whether an appeal is submitted online or offline, no identity validation of any description is required."

Like it's been extensively spelled out in massive detail in the full report available HERE, the Fine Gael government is demanding things that have have no basis in law. If the rest of the public was to try pushing something that they were not legally able to do - we would be accused of stepping outside the law, would we not? Yes. Fine Gael seems to think it can be exempt from legal laws and not just on the PSC issue!
(JobPath, Irish Water, water meters, Household charges and the way they were implemented, each by coercion. Four simple examples.)

You are not supposed to kop all this.

Quite Frankly...

We could easily go on about this matter - and we have, see HERE - HERE - HERE - and HERE.

Just to wrap things up here however, we can easily say that Fine Gael is leading the public on a merry dance and making the people of Ireland out to be all fools. To their surprise and disgust, many of them are thankfully not.

Fine Gael is also completely avoiding the mentioning of additional GDPR data protection laws they are also internationally breaking - besides completely ignoring a 2013 European Court of Justice ruling (Bara Case) regarding how people's data should be managed. So the next time you hear a Fine Gael representative saying they are within the law (try not to laugh, they are serious) and they try tell you this, they are lying through their teeth. We can say this easily and you can discover this and far more if you look under the covers of their very words blanketed out in an attempted whitewash. All this before we additionally get to the Fine Gael government giving the collected personal information (yours) to private companies also.

...But guess what? You are not supposed to kop all this!