Australian parliament adopts stronger privacy protection for COVID-19 tracing app

According to the New Daily, the Australian parliament has adopted a legislation strengthening the privacy protection of the government’s COVID-19 tracing app. The Attorney-General Christian Porter hopes these new protections will encourage citizens to join the 5.63 million who have downloaded and registered for the contact tracing scheme. According to ZDNet, the legislation ‘introduces serious offences relating to the COVIDSafe app data, covering the non-permitted collection, use, or disclosure of the data; the uploading of app data without consent; retaining or disclosing uploaded data outside Australia; decrypting the encrypted app data; and requiring COVIDSafe participation’.