Blaz: City ID holders can nix bank link to duck feds
Mayor de Blasio says he has an easy fix for people worried that adding banking smart chips to the city’s municipal ID card will make undocumented immigrants vulnerable to federal authorities — opt out.
Advocates believe the new program could allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hunt down people without proper immigration status by subpoenaing bank info, the Daily News revealed Sunday.
“No one has to participate if they don’t want to,’ de Blasio said Monday. “You can have an IDNYC under this new plan and not participate with any financial institutions, so right there that nullifies the whole point, the concern.”
The city has deleted its own records of who has applied for an IDNYC card, and no longer creates records of new applicants. But a financial institution would almost certainly be unable to destroy its records of customers, raising alarm among advocates — who have also noted banks are often the targets of security breaches and hacks.
De Blasio said the city would require “safeguards” on people’s information, but it’s unclear how that could work. The city’s request for proposals from potential banking partners asks what they would do if subpoenaed for such information.
“We’re going to put safeguards in place so that any information is kept private, and I think what you’re going to see is a lot of people, while they rightfully are concerned about what’s happening in Washington, they still want to have an opportunity to take care of themselves and their families better, and being able to go to a bank is part of that,” he said.
The News also revealed that the IDNYC program is part of Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson’s portfolio — and that he’d done paid work on behalf of MasterCard before joining the administration. “There will not be either a conflict or an appearance of a conflict. The deputy mayor will recuse himself from anything having to do with that contract process,” de Blasio said.