One thing that has been obvious about the response to the Chinese virus pandemic is how willing the public has been to co-operate with government restrictions that would normally be associated with totalitarian states. There have been some rumblings, particularly with over-zealous police fining people for anything from washing their car to buying garden supplies at Bunnings but, by and large, Australians have been compliant.
Surveys are indicating that a majority of Australians are prepared to download the government’s COVIDSafe app. Are they just scared sheep, being lured into a surveillance state with the dangled carrot of lifting lockdowns on condition they use the app? Or are they informed citizens making a rational choice? Do they have anything to worry about from the app, anyway?
Launching the app on Sunday, the government signalled it would take legislation to parliament when it returned in mid-May to impose a jailable offence for misusing the data. The app will allow health authorities to track and isolate the contacts of people who have been exposed to coronavirus to prevent escalating outbreaks.
“The more people who download this important public health app, the safer they and their family will be, the safer their community will be and the sooner we can safely lift restrictions and get back to business and do the things we love,” the Prime Minister said.
Taiwan is (rightly) held up as the gold standard for dealing with the Chinese virus. No small part of that was rigorous contact tracing.
So, is the trade-off between privacy and public health worth it? Should we elect to do what we’ve been praising Taiwan for?
The government is keen to reassure Australians that their privacy is secure.
Courts and the police are banned from accessing data from the app for criminal investigations or legal proceedings, as the government moved to create special privacy provisions to allay community concerns.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said people who downloaded the app would be able to use a fake name and could delete its data, which is encrypted, at any time[…]
The data will be accessed only by state health authorities if someone using the app has contracted COVID-19 and gives their permission for the information to be unencrypted.
It will be held by state health agencies until the end of the pandemic, when it will then be deleted[…]
The chief executive of the Cybersecurity Co-operative Research Centre, Rachael Falk, who was involved in the official independent review of the security features of the tracing app, said the CCRC was satisfied with the integrity of the app, given the limited nature of the personal data collected and its intended operation.
App developers have also independently taken apart the app and given it a cautious thumbs-up.
Interestingly, the government has elected to use Bluetooth technology for their app. Unlike GPS, Bluetooth does not inherently track a user’s absolute location.
COVIDSafe cannot track where you have been – it can only track who you have been in close contact with.
Bluetooth, with its limited range of 10-100 metres, works by registering a ‘virtual handshake’ with other Bluetooth devices nearby. COVIDSafe registers if users are within 1.5m of each other for 15 minutes. If one of those contacts later tests positive for COVID-19, then everyone they have registered contact with is sent an alert.
This sort of technology is widely in use. For instance, in ‘virtual tour guides’ in museums and zoos. Nintendo also uses the technology for its “Streetpass” feature, which allows console users to exchange information about their games with other users who might be nearby.
Which brings up an interesting point: some acquaintances who are vociferously opposed to a ‘government surveillance app’ have admitted to using Streetpass on their consoles. So why are they so afraid of using the same thing to track their possible exposure to the Chinese virus?
“I’d sooner trust a corporation than the government,” they said. Which might be fair enough – until you consider the vast amounts of data corporations like Facebook have clandestinely sold to third parties.
Perhaps oddly, given my strong distrust of governments and surveillance societies, I’m more than half-persuaded to download COVIDSafe. Morton’s Fork, perhaps, but given a choice between the Taiwanese experience and the Soviet-lite lockdown states we’re having to endure, I know which I’d prefer.
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