VICTORIA'S new myki smartcard will function as an unofficial tracking device, a civil liberties group has warned.
Young people travelling on six-monthly and yearly concession cards will be forced to give up their personal details if they want to use myki, as will those travelling on free government passes, including some elderly and disabled passengers.
Liberty Victoria has written to Attorney-General Rob Hulls with its concerns, particularly surrounding the card's use by young people and the unemployed who want to travel on concession fares.
The Government has rejected the group's concerns, with its ticketing authority writing back to the group to say that users' privacy will be protected, and that most people will be able to use their myki card anonymously.
''Liberty Victoria are quite mistaken,'' the myki project's spokeswoman, public relations consultant Jean Ker Walsh, said. ''Seniors and other concession holders can travel with an anonymous myki.''
The myki website implies otherwise, however, saying: ''If you apply for a concession myki, some personal details are necessary to establish if you are entitled to concession travel.''
Liberty Victoria's vice-president, barrister Georgia King-Siem, said the reality would be concession card holders having to register their identity.
''Concession holders are usually the most vulnerable in our society and it is abhorrent they are the ones whose privacy stands to be most invaded,'' she said.
''From a privacy perspective, the myki card is an unofficial tracking device.
''It will provide huge amounts of very valuable data on the … daily lives of a large percentage of the Victorian population. Get ready for Google-style target marketing.''
Myki is a microchipped and reuseable public transport ticket.
The smartcard collects information about users travel movements.
Myki is similar to smartcards used in several large cities around the world, including London. There, British police and counter-intelligence agency MI5 regularly request information from Transport for London, which manages the city's Oyster smartcard.
In a 10-month period last year, according to British consumer magazine Which?, London police made 3100 demands for data from Oyster cards.
In Victoria, police and intelligence agencies such as ASIO and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service will be able to force the Government's ticketing authority to hand over details on how travellers have used their myki pass.