What additional privacy impact does using the COVIDsafe app have for people in Australia who are using their phones normally?

Question

I've been trying to encourage some people I know to install and use the COVIDsafe app. Some people have raised privacy concerns as a reason to not install the app (there's other concerns, such as it reportedly interfering with diabetes apps). To the best of my knowledge, these people are using smartphones with SIM cards and lots of apps installed.

I understand that privacy breaches may involve either the developer of the app, malicious third parties, the Australian government, Amazon, and the US government, however I assume that the main concern is around the Australian government.

To what extent does using the COVIDsafe app give the Australian government data that it doesn't already have from existing sources of information?

Answer 1

"To what extent does using the COVIDsafe app give the Australian government data that it doesn't already have from existing sources of information?"

Just to start off I'm not an Australian but I would assume that the Australian Government has your name/age/HPNumber/addresses(postcode).

Based on the privacy policy of the covidsafe app, they would seek consent for the aforementioned list of data which the government, or any government should have on their citizens/population. The privacy policy states that they do not extract any location data.

The app merely focuses on contact data. Time/Date, Bluetooth signal strength to detect other users of the app & most importantly an encrypted user ID is generated & re-distributed every 2 hours. It adds another layer of obscurity over pinpointing a user. The contact data would be handled & operated by the Digital Transformation Agency Australia.

Hope this helps! The policy has pretty much everything, take a gander!