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Several state governments in Australia recently had to enact special legislation to stop law enforcement from using covid tracking data to find witnesses and su

Several state governments in Australia recently had to enact special legislation to stop law enforcement from using covid tracking data to find witnesses and suspects. All state governments had initially ensured the public that the data was not available to LE, but none of them had actually passed legislation to make it unlawful until journalists discovered that the Police were using the data. https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/call-for-national-qr-regime-to-block-police-access-20210616-p581lp https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/call-for-nat... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/safewa-app-sparks-urgent-law-change-after-police-access-data/100201340 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/safewa-app-sparks-urg... https://www.innovationaus.com/qld-police-accessed-qr-code-check-in-app-data/ https://www.innovationaus.com/qld-police-accessed-qr-code-ch...

atoav 5y ago
In Germany every piece of data you collect has to specifiy as narrow as possible what it is being collected for before you collect it. Using pandemic related data for policing is a data privacy violation. Of course that didn't stop police from still going into some places and demanding the data. But doing so was a clear breach of law. Every piece of personal data you collect creates a pull factor for various actors to abuse said data, which is why you shouldn't collect more than you need, you should delete (or anon/pseudonymize) it once it is not needed anymore or you should collect it in such a way ot wouldn't be useful for state actors. I am amazed how the German Corona-Warn-App was designed with these principles in mind. They managed to allow people to register into locations while only storing the data locally on your phone. Your phone then downloads the data from the servers in an non-revealing way and queries it for warnings/positive cases that have been issued in these locations at that time. If yes, you get a warning and you can decide how to proceed with this without having any other actor knowing of this. This software is a piece of art from a privacy standpoint.
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  At the same time the state-level regulatiins require recording name and contact data, thus making CWA not enough of a (legally accepted) solution, leaving paper lists or trainwrecks like Luca.
  - atoav 5y ago
    That is really weird afaik, but I saw stores which used CWA despite that : )
Rd6n6 5y ago
Canadian police departments got caught for this also (Ontario iirc)

atoav 5y ago

In Germany every piece of data you collect has to specifiy as narrow as possible what it is being collected for before you collect it. Using pandemic related data for policing is a data privacy violation. Of course that didn't stop police from still going into some places and demanding the data. But doing so was a clear breach of law. Every piece of personal data you collect creates a pull factor for various actors to abuse said data, which is why you shouldn't collect more than you need, you should delete (or anon/pseudonymize) it once it is not needed anymore or you should collect it in such a way ot wouldn't be useful for state actors. I am amazed how the German Corona-Warn-App was designed with these principles in mind. They managed to allow people to register into locations while only storing the data locally on your phone. Your phone then downloads the data from the servers in an non-revealing way and queries it for warnings/positive cases that have been issued in these locations at that time. If yes, you get a warning and you can decide how to proceed with this without having any other actor knowing of this. This software is a piece of art from a privacy standpoint.

johannes1234321 5y ago
At the same time the state-level regulatiins require recording name and contact data, thus making CWA not enough of a (legally accepted) solution, leaving paper lists or trainwrecks like Luca.
- atoav 5y ago
  That is really weird afaik, but I saw stores which used CWA despite that : )

Rd6n6 5y ago

Canadian police departments got caught for this also (Ontario iirc)