Ministry of Comm and Information Briefing by PDP Commission on use of NRIC

Dear Outreach

I will be attending the meeting on Monday 17 Sept 10 am at 10 Pasir Panjang Road.

I wish to bring up the following issues:

a) Use of NRIC

A unique advantage that Singapore has over many countries is our NRIC.
It helps to identify a person.
We should allow the NRIC No to be used to identify a person, e.g. for a lucky draw. 

There is no need to keep the NRIC confidential. A person's name is not confidential - why should the NRIC be confidential?

There is a fear that a fraudster may use the NRIC No to impersonate a person, e.g. when calling a bank.
The bank should, and does, have other means to authenticate a person, rather than rely solely on the NRIC No given over the telephone.
The same remark applies to other business entities that use the NRIC No to identify the customer.

b) Retention of NRIC

I agree that it should be made illegal for any party to retain the NRIC card. 
I have been asked to surrender my NRIC before I am allowed to access a building.
This should be stopped.
In fact, I think there is no need to record the NRIC of a visitor to a building or even a private condo.


c) Call center

This is a separate issue, but I like to bring it up.
It is very tiring for me to hear the message "You call will be recorded for training etc.....".  
I have heard it several hundred times over the years. 
I understand that the PDP Act requires customers to give consent before the conversations are recorded.
I find this provision to be unnecessary and troublesome, and wish to have it removed.
The customer does not have any choice, because if they do not agree to the recording, they will not get any service.


It will be helpful if the use of the recordings are controlled in an appropriate manner.

Thank you. Please acknowledge.

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