Philippe Folgado // Photo credit: Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 4:24 p.m., March 26, 2024
The government is tackling the vital card project. The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, wants to merge the vital card and the identity card. A way, according to him, to fight against identity fraud and abusive reimbursements. But this project raises questions about the security of medical data. Europe 1 takes stock.
A merger to fight identity fraud. During a press conference on March 20, Gabriel Attal indicated that the merger of the identity card with the vital card had become a “priority” project for his government. A project which should make it possible to fight against identity and reimbursement fraud. But will it be possible to preserve medical confidentiality with such a measure?
An electronic chip split into two...
It all started last spring, when the Prime Minister was still Minister of Public Accounts. This idea of merging the two cards did not receive strong support, in particular from the Ministry of the Interior and the National Health Insurance Fund (Cnam). Thomas Fatôme, general director of the Cnam, estimated that this measure would have only a weak effect in the fight against fraud: "The amounts of fraud likely to be linked to fraudulent use of the Vitale card are minimal."
In the recommendations of the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties), published in May 2023, the scenario which aims to integrate the Social Security number into the identity card is the "least intrusive and least intrusive solution". risky." According to her, the 15-digit number should not be written on the identity card, nor in the form of a QR code, but "in a partitioned compartment" in the electronic chip, present in all new cards.
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... before dematerialization?
The government's goal is for this electronic chip to be divided into two independent parts. On one side, identity information would be readable for law enforcement during a check, for example, and on the other, information related to Social Security visible only to health tools and professionals. The CNIL called for “implementing security measures to ensure that the Social Security number is not communicated to other actors”. When the card is created, the principle of professional secrecy could be applied by the town hall services.
Gabriel Attal specified that this merger project could join another project, led by the Ministry of the Interior, that of the “dematerialization” of the identity card. Ultimately, the Carte Vitale, like the driving license, will be integrated into the France Idêtes application, which hosts the digital version of the identity card.