It Seems We Have Got Some Peak Stupidity Going On In The West!

This great find appeared in Innovation Aus a few days ago. (https://www.innovationaus.com)

WA Police to retain COVID border entry data for 25 years

Justin Hendry
Editor

14 October 2022

The Western Australian police will retain personal information collected by the state’s COVID-19 border management system for at least 25 years, before archiving it indefinitely, the state government has revealed.

Amid questions over data retention in the wake of the Optus data breach, the government this week confirmed the 25-year retention period for archived data from G2G Pass, which was discontinued with the removal of interstate travel restrictions at the end of April.

“G2G data will be retained for 25 years before being transferred to the State Records Office, in accordance with records retention policies,” Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson said during parliament this week.

G2G Pass was introduced in April 2020 to manage interstate or overseas arrivals to WA during first wave of the pandemic, and required travellers to submit an application each time they entered the state.

The system, which was discontinued on April 30, is distinctive to the G2G Now home quarantine smartphone app that used facial recognition technology and location data to confirm a person’s whereabouts.

Minister Dawson, who was responding to questions without notice on behalf of the Police Minster Paul Papalia, said the G2G Pass data is “considered a state archive in accordance with the State Records Act 2000, which requires the information to be kept”.

He also stressed that the data is “able to be accessed by only six employees of the Western Australian Police Force staff – not by all police officers”.

WA Liberal MP and shadow police minister Peter Collier said the 25-year retention period for G2G Pass was totally unnecessary given interstate travel restrictions and the pass system were removed in April.

“To learn they are going to retain all of the information they receive from Western Australians for their G2G passes for 25 years – and then transfer it to the State Records Office is astounding,” he said.

Mr Collier said most Western Australians would not have been unaware of the government’s intentions to retain the data for 25 years when they provided the data as a requirement of entering the state.

More here:

https://www.innovationaus.com/wa-police-to-retain-covid-border-entry-data-for-25-years/

Well done Justin for spotting this and showing just how stupid and stubborn petty bureaucrats can be!

The program that created the data has been closed for six months, the police could just possibly want it kept to track criminals coming into WA for a year or two, but after that retaining the data is just nonsense.

Elsewhere in the last few weeks we see personal data spilling like water from Woollies, Optus, NZ Health Networks, Medibank and who knows who else in the last 3-4 weeks and these clowns think they know better! Sorry you bureaucratic  goons, when data is no longer useful you much get rid of it! It really is as simple as that!

All of us can then sleep better!

Wandering off in disbelief of just how crazy some are….

David.