This appeared a few days ago.
‘This must not be permanent’: Privacy experts sound alarm over QR codes
April 10, 2021 — 7.09pm
Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello has promised mandatory venue check-ins will be lifted “as soon as we get the green light from health experts”, as privacy experts warn the COVID-19 check-in tool lacks safeguards.
Mr Dominello said the QR code system was only intended for contact tracing during “pandemic conditions” but those might continue for some time.
“As soon as we get the green light from health experts that it is no longer necessary, the QR check-in requirement for high-risk venues will be removed,” he said.
Mr Dominello said the data was securely stored for 28 days and then destroyed, and “under no circumstance ... shared with other parties or agencies outside NSW Health”. Privacy was at the “forefront of our thinking” when delivering digital services, he said.
But Michelle Falstein, secretary of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, warned personal data collected by the check-in tool could be used for purposes other than contact tracing.
“Such broad purpose could enable the sharing of health information with police or for any other number of additional, loosely linked purposes not anticipated by the public,” Ms Falstein said in a letter to Mr Dominello.
Ms Falstein also expressed concern about the lack of an end date for use of the check-in tool to enter businesses such as pubs, restaurants and entertainment venues.
The use of QR codes is becoming more widespread, with Sydney Airport announcing a partnership with provider Mr Yum which means customers will now permanently use contactless table service and food pick-up from food courts at the domestic terminals.
The scheme was trialled over the Easter long weekend and the airport’s corporate affairs manager Karen Halbert said it was “an important part of enhancing the customer experience”.
Mr Dominello said QR codes could be used in other settings to improve the customer experience, such as visiting schools.
NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge said there were solid reasons to track people’s time in enclosed spaces while the public health crisis continued, but warned: “This must not be a permanent state of affairs.”
Mr Shoebridge said the government had provided little guidance to businesses early in the pandemic on how to manage personal data gathered from QR codes and sign in tools. “It’s extremely likely there are large zombie data sets floating around in thousands of private businesses which pose a real security risk to people,” he said.
A spokesman for NSW Privacy Commissioner Samantha Gavel said she had not received any complaints about inappropriate handling of personal data collected by the check-in tool.
But the NSW Auditor-General in December criticised Service NSW’s handling of customers’ personal information to ensure privacy.
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If you stand back and just look at the rights and freedoms that have been stripped from the ordinary citizen since the onset of the pandemic it has really been astonishing. We have been locked in our homes for weeks at a time, stopped from leaving or entering our country, paid from our own pockets to ‘work from home’, given up pretty much all collective forms of entertainment and have had our movements tracked in just incredible detail – revealing all sorts of aspects of our life we may have wished to keep to ourselves.
No wonder the “Sky After Dark” team and some columnists from the Australian are really keen to see all these rights and freedoms restored with things like identified movement tracking returning to being totally voluntary and so on.
I have to say I agree and we must, knowing how the authorities love extra powers and control, make sure we get back to the status quo ante. We need to have our privacy rights and our capacity to simply go about our lives as we wish – within the law as it was – as soon as that is possible.
With the vaccine dramas we are now seeing it make take a little longer but 5 years from now we must not be looking around wondering why we do not have it all back.
I hope we can hold the politicians to account for the earliest possible restoration of our freedoms as we knew them!
David.
We might just come to understand Agile only looks to work when going in a certain direction. Unpicking this mess of ScoMo and Dutton will not be easy.
ReplyDeleteWith Scott from Marketing and Greg Hunt now in a pickle of their own doing, Dutton under investigation by ANAO (to be cleared), and now Government Services Minister Linda Reynolds used her first radio interviews since taking medical leave to call for a change to toxic workplace practices in Australia’s Parliament. (obviously blind to her own actions and character).
ReplyDeleteI hold little hope things will roll back neatly.