Under the “Live Digital” initiative, Colombian Minister of Information and Communication Technologies Diego Molano is pushing a policy program under which the government will bestow upon each citizen a “digital portfolio,” where all of one’s personal data held by the state, ranging from state identification and passport numbers to tax information and health data, would be stored together and come with a unique government-issued email address.
Although conceived as a pathway to greater efficiency in communication between government agencies and reduction of paper use, the policy has raised concern that it may leave citizens vulnerable to greater government surveillance or to malicious hacking.
One concerned citizen, a Colombian industrial engineer named Pedro Rivera, filed an information request with the Minister of Information and Communication Technologies in an effort to obtain information on various aspects of the project. Rivera filed the request with the support of the digital rights collective “RedPaTodos”, which advocates for absolute transparency on matters of public policymaking. Rivera argues that the initiative should be repealed or subject to public review and approval before being implemented.
Image Credit: Kevin LaBianco via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
On Pastebin, Rivera acknowledges the potential conveniences offered by the system but rejects certain aspects of the system, noting that they could lead to different kinds of abuse and infringe human rights. This paragraph references the revelations of Edward Snowden, as they relate to Google:
RedPaTodos published “Concerns and Proposals on the Citizen Portfolio initiative,” affirming its support for the petition and broader initiative. They conclude:
Human rights lawyer and Internet advocate Carolina Botero, writing for El Espectador, expressed concern about the silence that the ICT Ministry has maintained surrounding the issue. She also highlighted comments published on the website of Fundacion Karisma, a digital rights organization under her leadership:
So far, there have been no responses from the national government. For citizens, the wait continues.
(This article was originally published on Global Voices).
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