Coronavirus: Tracing app needs strong limits

So far, so very good, at least quashing coronavirus. Repairing the economy also will be a stern test, with the timing of the challenges closely linked. On Tuesday, the news that elective surgeries, dental treatments, cancer screening and IVF procedures would restart after the Anzac Day weekend was the first sign of life as Australians knew it beginning to return to normal. We might be at the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning. Scott Morrison says we are on the road to recovery. But much will depend on governments, health authorities and the public managing COVID-19. Any second-wave surge like that afflicting Singapore must be avoided.

Winding back restrictions, the Prime Minister said last week, depended on three prerequisites. Two of these are close to being achieved — extensive testing and the capability to respond to any surge in cases with sufficient hospital beds, ventilators and personal protective equipment for medical staff. Mr Morrison plans to fulfil his third condition — better contact tracing — through the government’s coronavirus tracing app. The app, which has won in-principle support from the national cabinet, is being designed to detect who a COVID-19 positive patient has come into contact with and who may need to be tested. The same approach worked well in Singapore and Taiwan.

Citizens in Australia, for good reason, are already wary about more incursions by government into their private lives. Creeping national security laws and limits on the public’s right to know what governments are doing are increasingly problematic. On Wednesday, Janet Albrechtsen details potential problems with the COVID-19 app. High among them is the record of government agencies seeking access to customer telco data far in excess of what was promised when laws were made to collect the data for set periods.

From the outset, Mr Morrison’s “very strong preference” has been that Australians would download the coronavirus tracing app voluntarily, as a form of “national service” in an extraordinary time. After Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly set alarm bells ringing when he said the government would “start with” voluntary downloads, Mr Morrison wisely intervened to make it clear it would not be compulsory. On Tuesday, he sought to reassure the public further. The app, he said, would collect data and put it into an encrypted national store that could be accessed only by state and territory health officials. No federal agency, such as Centrelink, or federal departments would be allowed to access the data.

While manual contact tracing can take up to three days, an app, as technology reporter Chris Griffith has written, would allow people at risk to be contacted within minutes of another person testing positive. This would reduce the exposure of loved ones, work colleagues and others to the virus.

The government insists 40 per cent of Australians would need to sign up to the app for it to have enough data to function effectively. The onus is on the government to demonstrate how and why the app would pose no threat to civil liberties. It needs to prove all data would be deleted when the pandemic is over. Mr Morrison says the government has listened to privacy concerns and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk is developing a privacy statement. In fighting COVID-19, technology offers assistance that was unimaginable when the Spanish flu killed 13,000 of five million Australians a century ago. But its application must not cost Australians’ precious liberties.