The chip hits the fan on IDs
Advocacy groups will no longer recommend that undocumented immigrants get a municipal ID card if the city goes forward with plans to add a financial services smart-chip to them, several said Monday.
They warned that the proposal presents massive security and privacy problems. Identities could be revealed, they said, or user data could be stolen and sold, putting undocumented New Yorkers to whom the card is marketed as safe ID at risk of exposure to a hostile federal government.
“Unfortunately, if this program is expanded this way, we as a community organization cannot just assure community members that this is the best way to go,” said Natalia Audi with immigration advocacy group Make the Road New York. “They’re going to ask if we should be continuing to have this ID. And unfortunately, if our worries are not addressed, our answer has to be no.”
The Daily News first reported the growing concern about the plan last month. Make the Road was one of several groups instrumental in the creation of the IDNYC to testify against the proposed changes Monday during a City Council hearing, sounding the alarm for the plan to involve a third-party financial technology company in an ID program where people’s personal information has been closely guarded.
Betsy Plum, a vice president at the New York Immigration Coalition, said the benefits of the card currently outweigh the risks — so the organization actively promotes it.
“If the risks start outweighing the benefits, we can’t do that anymore. And then it would be a question of depending on what it looks like, would we have to actively say no longer sign up for this card, or no longer use this card,” she told The News after the hearing.
The city’s goal in adding the chip is to increase access to banking services for New Yorkers, undocumented or not, who use the ID. But many groups that support that goal — including the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union and the New Economy Project — panned the city’s current plan.
“This sweeping integration would result in massive data collection about IDNYC cardholders and expose undocumented and other INDYC cardholders to serious risks that are unwarranted at any time, but certainly in this moment in time with a morethan-hostile federal administration,” Deyanira Del Rio, codirector of the New Economy Project, testified.
It also won’t make any more banks accept the card as a primary form of identification for opening an account, she said. Instead, it would turn the ID into a reloadable debit card option, which she argued was inferior to a bank account.
The advocates spoke after Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Bitta Mostofi, who received little pressing by the Council on the security concerns and said that the city would seek a system that did not require any unique cardholder information on the chip.
“If we are not satisfied that we can obtain the protections and benefits that we seek for IDNYC cardholders, we are not under any obligation to award a contract and will not do so,” Mostofi said.