Call to protect contact tracing data

eHealthNews.nz: Covid-19

Tuesday, 7 September 2021

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Contact tracer app 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.”

“Last year, we saw several cases of pen and paper records being misused by individuals to stalk others, and a number of businesses re-using data from pen and paper records for marketing purposes,” it adds.

“The signatories to this letter collectively strongly recommend that the government adopt legislation to clarify that data collected for contact tracing purposes must only be used for contact tracing purposes.”

Signatories include associate professor Siouxsie Wiles and Andrew Chen from The Centre for Informed Futures at Auckland University and Patricia Cunniffe from Privacy Foundation New Zealand.

The letter says new legislation should apply to data collected through digital and analogue means, and should apply to government agencies, private sector agencies, and individuals.

As of September 7 there were more than 3.1 million users of the COVID Tracer app with more than 340 million poster scans and 15 million manual entries in total. More than 900,000 poster scans were over the past 24 hours.