Selling the surveillance state

Scott Morrison’s assurance that “privacy issues are paramount” is not nearly enough to allay fears about the proposed COVID-19 tracking app backed by national cabinet. The Prime Minister contends the app, based on Singapore’s successful TraceTogether, will work only between two phones that have downloaded the app and are in contact with each other for 15 minutes or more. Highlighting protections for those opting in to the app, which is expected to be ready in a fortnight, he said telephone numbers involved in such contacts would “go into a secure encrypted location, not in the phones” and that they would not be available to either user. Mr Morrison views the app as a vital resource, akin to war bonds, giving Australians a chance to get behind “the national effort” in fighting the pandemic. He says the technology will help authorities trace the virus more quickly than the current manual method. The more people who download the app, Mr Morrison claims, the more “we can get back to a more liveable set of arrangements”.

Given Singapore’s status as a de facto one-party state, personal privacy concerns do not rate highly among its disciplined, mostly well-educated, digitally savvy 5.7 million people. Surveys show three-quarters of Singaporeans trust the way officialdom handles their personal data. There was little opposition when Singapore’s government launched its app. Critics of TraceTogether say only 20 per cent of Singaporeans have bothered to subscribe, a remarkably low support number. Yet many Singaporeans see the app as a backup to manual tracking rather than an essential first line of defence. Certainly, Singapore, until recently, along with Taiwan, was regarded as being among the most successful countries in defending itself against COVID-19. In recent weeks, however, there has been a sudden surge in confirmed cases, causing the city-state to go into lockdown for the first time, closing schools and shops.

Mr Morrison has set an ambitious take-up target of 40 per cent. He argues “industrial-level” contact tracing is one of three preconditions — along with expanded virus testing for asymptomatic people and upgraded hospital capacity to deal with outbreaks — to ease restrictions and get back to normal. Mr Morrison says invasive contact tracing, paradoxically, will give “Australians more freedoms”. The app is a “sacrifice” people need to make, he says. First stick, then carrot. Sure, people already give up an enormous amount of metadata to companies, including mobile service providers, smartphone makers and Facebook. Some of that data is collected under national security laws. The proposed app is for the public good rather than the surveillance capitalism of the tech titans’ business models. But the key to the proposed electronic monitoring, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is to ensure the datasets are not abused, for instance, by discriminating against people. In any case, Mr Morrison has a huge task in selling a tracking app to Australians already wary of the grip of state control and the creep of national security laws.