Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has asked officials for advice on potential law changes that could address lingering privacy worries with the NZ Covid Tracer app. It comes after a leading data expert and Privacy Commissioner John Edwards suggested legal tweaks that would ensure agencies couldn't use tracer data for spying or criminal investigations. That effectively meant that intelligence agencies who incidentally collected tracer data from phones had to delete that data and could not use it. For example, he said, there had been some 30 different providers for digital contact tracing QR codes in the past. "This data is well secured in the ministry's systems and the ministry has undertaken only to use it for contact tracing purposes."

Source: New Zealand Herald February 07, 2021 01:30 UTC