Crikey, 1 June 2021:
Police across the country are attempting to access personal data from mandatory COVID-19 check-in apps for reasons other than contact tracing, despite promises that the data would only be used for public health reasons.
Police in Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria have all owned up to trying to access logs of data created by Australians using check-in applications as part of their investigations, and enquiries by Crikey suggest that police in other states could also access this data using a warrant.
Privacy advocates have slammed state governments for lying to Australians about what the data would be used for.
“We were told this data would only be used for contact tracing. Police made that a lie,” Electronic Frontiers Australia’s Justin Warren told Crikey. “People will remember that next time governments want us to give them data about ourselves.”
One of the major tools in fighting the spread of COVID-19 and managing outbreaks has been contact tracing, which has been aided by various tech solutions.
When the federal government first proposed the contact tracing app COVIDSafe (which used Bluetooth to log close contacts), it responded to fears of a mass surveillance state by announcing the data would not be used by police.
But adoption of a QR code check-in system — the widely used, low-tech alternative now mandatory in many places around the country — was left to states to implement. As it turns out, these states did not assume the same protections for their citizens, meaning that data volunteered in the name of public health has been accessed for other reasons…..
Read the full article here.
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