This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Governments Are Really Working Hard To Make Sure We Don’t Trust Them.
A little while ago I pointed out how
corrosive it was to have Governments say one thing and then either mislead or
do the opposite to what they said.
The
nation’s privacy watchdog has called for police forces to be banned from
accessing information from QR code check-in applications after law enforcement
agencies have sought to use the contact-tracing data on at least six occasions
to solve unrelated crimes.
There
are also growing calls from backbench MPs and civil liberties groups to phase
out the compulsory check-in applications once the worst of the COVID-19
pandemic is over.
Queensland
Police gained access to the Check In Qld app in June through a search warrant
after the theft of a police-issued firearm, which led
to an officer being stood down. Western Australian Police has used its data
twice without a warrant, which led to the state then banning police from
accessing the data, while Victoria Police has tried but been rebuffed on at
least three occasions.
NSW,
South Australia and the Northern Territory have ruled out the use of the
check-in app data by police.
A
spokesperson for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said
protecting personal information was central to maintaining public trust and promoting
compliance with health orders and contact tracing.
“The
OAIC considers that personal information collected for contact-tracing purposes
should not be used for other purposes such as law enforcement or even direct
marketing,” the spokesperson said.
“Allowing
personal information to be used for other purposes may undermine an effective
and efficient contact-tracing system, for example, by discouraging individuals
from giving accurate information.”
The
OAIC said there should be “nationally consistent requirements regarding the
collection, use and disclosure of contact-tracing information”.
Liberal
senator James Paterson, chair of federal Parliament’s intelligence and security
committee, said states should replicate the “gold-standard” privacy protections
in the Commonwealth COVID safe app which ensured the data can only be used for
public health purposes.
“If
regular state police access to check-in data undermines trust and confidence in
their apps it will be entirely self-defeating,” he said. “We do not need to
make the task of contact tracers any harder by discouraging people from using
the apps.”
Liberal
MP Tim Wilson said, “we were told QR check-ins were for health purposes only,
if they’re now being used for law enforcement it is a fundamental breach of
trust”.
“The
fastest way to break public confidence and willingness to ‘check in’ is to rake
the data for secondary purposes we were explicitly told would not happen.”
Australia’s
privacy watchdog says police access to COVID-19 check-in app
histories has the potential to “undermine” contact tracing efforts and should
be prohibited.
The Office of the Australian Information
Commissioner (OAIC), in which Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk sits, was
responding to recent evidence of multiple requests by law enforcement officials
across Australia attempting to access the check-in histories of state and
territory COVID check-in apps.
If law-enforcement access remained
unconstrained, as remains the case in some states and territories, it could
discourage individuals from providing accurate information, the OAIC said.
As reported by InnovationAus in June,
Western Australian police twice accessed data from the state’s COVID-19 contact
tracing check-in app, forcing the state government to introduce urgent
legislation to prevent it from happening again. The data was reportedly sought
in order to find potential witnesses to a crime committed near a cafe.
And
in Victoria, police attempted to take data from the app three times without a
warrant, but were blocked by the health department. Victoria Police can access
information with a court-issued warrant, government services minister Danny
Pearson revealed in June, adding later in the month that he did not support the
introduction of legislation restricting police access.
Meanwhile,
in Queensland, police have also made use of the state’s check-in app data as
part of an investigation into the reported theft of an officer’s gun and
Taser from a regional pub. Officer were later directed
not to access such data “except in extraordinary circumstances” and the officer
involved was stood down pending an ethical standards investigation.
The
NSW government is one of the few states that, from the start, has had
restrictions baked into its public health orders that restrict police access.
“The
OAIC considers that health orders that expressly prohibit access to contact
tracing data for law enforcement purposes are best able to protect personal
information and increase community trust and confidence in using QR Codes,” the
OAIC said in a statement to InnovationAus this week.
“Allowing
personal information to be used for other purposes may undermine
an effective and efficient contact tracing system, for example, by discouraging
individuals from giving accurate information. Where state and territory public
health orders permit other uses and disclosures, the order should be specific
to provide transparency and clarity.”
More than 100 academics
and privacy experts have signed an open letter calling on the Government to
ensure personal information collected for contact tracing is not misused.
The letter to Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says, “we
urge you to consider the adoption of legislative protections for recordkeeping
data collected for contact tracing purposes as a matter of urgency,”
Mandatory record keeping was announced on August 22, which includes not only
the use of the NZ COVID Tracer app to scan QR codes, but also manual
recordkeeping in workplaces as well as people using personal apps and diaries
to record their movements.
The letter says this requirement to record data at all alert levels in certain
venues will lead to a significant increase in the amount of data being
collected by individuals and businesses.
It says academics had expected the Order for mandatory record keeping to
include clear protections against misuse of the data, but the only protection
is that contact records collected for the sole purpose of enabling contact
tracing should be held for 60 days and then disposed of.
“In our opinion, the protections provided in the Order are insufficient to protect
the rights of people in Aotearoa New Zealand,” it says.
Concerns include the potential for; police and government agencies with
enforcement powers to use this data for investigatory or enforcement purposes;
private sector agencies to use this data for marketing purposes; employers to
use this data for purposes other than health and safety; and individuals to use
this data coercively against other individuals.
The letter says the collection of information to support contact tracing
processes should be encouraged, but the potential for misuse of that
information may dissuade people from doing it.
It highlights instances in Singapore and Australia where contact tracing data
has been used for law enforcement purposes.
A Ministry of Health research report into contact tracing technologies in
October 2020 showed that a significant proportion of individuals hold “concerns
about being tracked by Government/privacy issues.”
So it seems that on both sides of ‘The
Ditch’ if you collect personal data and don’t firmly control it some clever ass
will come along and try and exploit it.
To paraphrase“The price of keeping your data to yourself
is eternal vigilance”!
They really do work hard to destroy
and confidence – and seem to think no-one will care when people clearly do.
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