App privacy wait-and-see

Brinley Duggan | Examiner Newspaper | July 5, 2021   

Legislating against the use of the Check in Tas app by police could see the community more inclined to make use of it, a Tasmanian tech expert says.

Nelson MLC Meg Webb’s public privacy concerns were addressed in the Tasmanian upper house last week after asking if private personal data obtained by the app might be accessible in police investigations.

The answers came after interstate examples saw requests for access to the check in data came in Victoria and Western Australia, where the latter saw legislation introduced to close a loophole allowing police access to the data during investigations without needing a court ordered warrant.

University of Tasmania researcher and digital security expert Joel Scanlan said, without an assurance the app data would not be accessible to Tasmania Police, public trust in the process could be impacted.

“For this sort of tracking and tracing to be effective, people need to know the reasons their information could be accessed,” he said.

“It needs to be built on trust otherwise they’re not going to sign in which undermines the effectiveness of contact tracing.”

Cabinet minister Guy Barnett maintained neither Tasmania Police or any other bodies had made requests to access the data.

“It’s important to be aware it’s all based on contact tracing so it’s designed to keep people safe, and if people understand the objectives of that, that’s the key point,” he said.

But Ms Webb said the Tasmanian government had the chance to be proactive in closing any loopholes in the state to ensure public confidence, particularly as it made checking in mandatory.

“The concern is if we wait until there is a problem that means we are waiting until people’s privacy has been breached,” she said.

Mr Barnett said Tasmania Police had not said they had not expressed an intent to use the data and that the government would monitor the situation. He said if police did express an intent to access the data the government would need to “discuss that with them at the time”.

Read Meg’s Check-in TAS app questions in Parliament and Govt answers