Vodafone Australia sharing location data with the government to fight coronavirus

[KeppyKep]

https://www.theage.com.au/technology/mobile-phone-location-data-used-to-track-australians-movements-during-coronavirus-crisis-20200404-p54h09.html

 

One of Australia's largest Telcos is giving location data to the government to track people's movements.

The other telcos are refusing to say whether they're also doing it and have no legal obligation to disclose.

It's not as bad as the headline suggests. The data is not personal, and only shows the number of people in a given area at a given time. They've stated it will not be used to enforce self-isolation.

Quote

Privacy and the rights of our citizens are paramount, we cannot and do not try to determine individual movement. Any data we use is anonymised and subject to rigorous privacy and security settings

Would be curious to hear Luke and Linus' thoughts on this kind of data usage on the next WAN show.

[paddy-stone]

 

8 minutes ago, KeppyKep said:

Any data we use is anonymised

 

Not very anonymous if a single person or family lives in x place is it?

[Commodus]

5 minutes ago, KeppyKep said:

https://www.theage.com.au/technology/mobile-phone-location-data-used-to-track-australians-movements-during-coronavirus-crisis-20200404-p54h09.html

 

One of Australia's largest Telcos is giving location data to the government to track people's movements.

The other telcos are refusing to say whether they're also doing it and have no legal obligation to disclose.

It's not as bad as the headline suggests. The data is not personal, and only shows the number of people in a given area at a given time. They've stated it will not be used to enforce self-isolation.

Would be curious to hear Luke and Linus' thoughts on this kind of data usage on the next WAN show.

There are a few efforts like that around the world.

 

Frankly, it feels necessary as long as it respects privacy and goes away when things settle down (which should be the case here).  We won't get back to something vaguely approaching normal until we have a good handle on how infection rates are declining (or in the worst cases, bouncing back), and that means having extensive contact tracing.

[williamcll]

The lawyers are going to have a field day with this.

[DildorTheDecent]

>upside-down land tomfoolery

 

Is this supposed to be new or surprising?

[RejZoR]

It's weird how when avast! was selling aggregated data everyone was raging around how it wasn't anonymized properly blablabla and this has to be like hundredth news about anonymized data to fight X and Y by collecting "anonymized" data and no one questions if it's really. Weird...

[BuckGup]

51 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's weird how when avast! was selling aggregated data everyone was raging around how it wasn't anonymized properly blablabla and this has to be like hundredth news about anonymized data to fight X and Y by collecting "anonymized" data and no one questions if it's really. Weird...

Look at the Patriot Act in the US after 911

[Unixsystem]

20 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Look at the Patriot Act in the US after 911

Don't worry I'm sure that the governments of the world will be happy to discard all of their excess powers and give back all of the citizens their rights once this is all over. 

 

Once everyone unilaterally agrees that it's safe. 

 

At some indeterminate point in the future. 

 

Maybe. 

[mr moose]

It's actually quite easy to convert position data into movement data without identifying a single person.   I mean everyone knows the population of any town or suburb so knowing that there are X number of devices in any one area doesn't give you more information,  but knowing that X percent of those device leave the area does give important information about peoples movement.  There is also no need for device to be given an anonymous name because you only need to know if a device leaves the area and how many times not which device did.

 

In fact you can know if a device leaves the area more than once per time period and how far it travels without having an identifier for that device.

 

It really is a big nothing burger, I get the fear of big bad government,  but this data is data they can already get anytime they want if they need it, and quite often they do get it, it is not data that can be used to identify you personally and is not sold to companies for marketing.

[BuckGup]

1 hour ago, Unixsystem said:

Don't worry I'm sure that the governments of the world will be happy to discard all of their excess powers and give back all of the citizens their rights once this is all over. 

 

Once everyone unilaterally agrees that it's safe. 

 

At some indeterminate point in the future. 

 

Maybe. 

Ha

[Arika]

7 hours ago, KeppyKep said:

The other telcos are refusing to say whether they're also doing it and have no legal obligation to disclose.

read: yes they are

[Commodus]

4 hours ago, Unixsystem said:

Don't worry I'm sure that the governments of the world will be happy to discard all of their excess powers and give back all of the citizens their rights once this is all over. 

 

Once everyone unilaterally agrees that it's safe. 

 

At some indeterminate point in the future. 

 

Maybe. 

In addition to needing to read Mr Moose's post before you panic... this is not a "won't someone think of the children" attempt at overreach.  This is very explicitly about saving thousands of lives in the near future.  If there isn't adequate contact tracing, it may take considerably longer to lift lockdowns, and the timing could be botched in a way that prompts a second wave of infections.  By all means hold governments' feet to the fire if they botch the privacy or keep the technology around for longer than necessary.  But right now, we're in a situation where we either lean on every resource available to end the lockdowns smoothly or we take a big gamble.

[TempestCatto]

9 hours ago, KeppyKep said:

Would be curious to hear Luke and Linus' thoughts on this kind of data usage on the next WAN show.

I think on the most recent WAN show they talked about American (I think) tele-co's using bluetooth to help determine if you were near someone who was compromised. They were for it/thought it was a good idea, rather than using GPS which could be too personal but also not as reliable indoors.

[The Flying Sloth]

As much as I love living in Australia our privacy laws are utter s[bad]t, government trying to ban encryption, yada yada, it basically just really sucks so I guarantee the other Telcos give all that data to the Government already without Coronavirus being a consideration. Beyond specialist cyber units out police force are fairly computer illiterate from what I've heard from cop friends and what I've experienced dealing directly with the police force (not as a suspect, it's all kosher) so I'm not so much bothered by police potentially having that information, besides, we're a 5 eyes signatory so there are much bigger things to worry about.
Also,
Vodaphone is a relatively small Telco with roughly 20%Australian market share (the rest is prettymuch made up of two much larger companies)

Sloth

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

I think on the most recent WAN show they talked about American (I think) tele-co's using bluetooth to help determine if you were near someone who was compromised. They were for it/thought it was a good idea, rather than using GPS which could be too personal but also not as reliable indoors.

The current problem with that is the application requires to be run and left in the background and of course has to be installed. Apple and Google are working on similar I think but for now the quickest information source is from the telcos and their information, which doesn't require any roll-out at all as it's pre-existing.

 

Until mobile OS's have a feature when you can turn on contact tracing, after an emergency alert system message is sent, then options aren't really that great.

[PlayStation 2]

Mmm... government tracking. Welcome to the New World Order. The Coronavirus was just an easy excuse to push the next level of surveillance and rights stripping.

[RejZoR]

And then when all of this will be in place, government and law enforcement will bombard these companies to reveal the tracking data to them. Because they'll know it's there. And we know Google will cave in easily, Apple maybe a bit less. And while there is a 1 in a 700 trillion chance such tracking data would exonerate me in some bizarre criminal case, it's a liability the other 699 trillion times. Yeah, no thanks, I don't want this shit around. And then there is also PRISM program. We don't even know what all shit they collect and if any of this would also fall into that. Which all of a sudden makes it creepy as fuck no matter how innocent it looks. To have everyone's location and also proximity with other parties is Batman echo location creepy level. And that was just fictional movie and even there protagonist had ethical and moral concerns and made it a "one time feature" that self destructed afterwards. Are you going to trust generally scummy governments to actually kill it off after COVID19 thing blows over? Yeah, my confidence level is of lowest measured temperature in Siberia...

[mr moose]

37 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The current problem with that is the application requires to be run and left in the background and of course has to be installed. Apple and Google are working on similar I think but for now the quickest information source is from the telcos and their information, which doesn't require any roll-out at all as it's pre-existing.

 

Until mobile OS's have a feature when you can turn on contact tracing, after an emergency alert system message is sent, then options aren't really that great.

 

Aus government are working on a version that is opt in  that tracks you and the people you come into contact with.  Google and apple are working on one, rumor is it isn't optional (happy to be corrected if anyone has more info on it).

12 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And then when all of this will be in place, government and law enforcement will bombard these companies to reveal the tracking data to them. Because they'll know it's there.

 

When what will be in place?  they have always had this data and the government has always had access to it.  nothing new is being presented in this news.  It is the same in any country with a digital phone network.   The only difference is our telco's can remove the identifiers from it and it's just a bunch of movements by unknown people.

 

12 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And we know Google will cave in easily, Apple maybe a bit less. And while there is a 1 in a 700 trillion chance such tracking data would exonerate me in some bizarre criminal case, it's a liability the other 699 trillion times. Yeah, no thanks, I don't want this shit around. And then there is also PRISM program. We don't even know what all shit they collect and if any of this would also fall into that. Which all of a sudden makes it creepy as fuck no matter how innocent it looks. To have everyone's location and also proximity with other parties is Batman echo location creepy level. And that was just fictional movie and even there protagonist had ethical and moral concerns and made it a "one time feature" that self destructed afterwards. Are you going to trust generally scummy governments to actually kill it off after COVID19 thing blows over? Yeah, my confidence level is of lowest measured temperature in Siberia...

 

You'd better stop using mobile phones then,  your fears are already reality and mostly happening in every country.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Aus government are working on a version that is opt in  that tracks you and the people you come into contact with.  Google and apple are working on one, rumor is it isn't optional (happy to be corrected if anyone has more info on it).

They are all based off the same app and has the problem I mention, you actually have to install it and you actually have to remember to run the app and leave it running. Apple and Google are working to provide the solution to that problem, it's not a one or the other it's what has to be done now while OS makers provide the tool in the OS to do it properly.

[RejZoR]

Maybe so, but it was still something that had to be requested by a valid court order. Now they'll just make some shit up and say you're health issue and everyone will hand your info over. Which is much easier to make up than fabricating a murder case or some shit. I know I'm far stretching things, but levels of governmental scum have no limits... I mean, I frankly trust my mobile provider (from Austria) and Apple more than my own government. It's not tyrannical, but the way they act you just have zero confidence and trust in them to be honest.

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Now they'll just make some shit up and say you're health issue and everyone will hand your info over.

No they won't because without an active state of emergency a telco isn't going to do anything and there is still a required legal framework to request such data. Reality is far different than what your mind is making up about the process. Bureaucracy is rife in government, things don't just unilaterally happen.

[mr moose]

Just now, RejZoR said:

Maybe so, but it was still something that had to be requested by a valid court order. Now they'll just make some shit up and say you're health issue and everyone will hand your info over. Which is much easier to make up than fabricating a murder case or some shit. I know I'm far stretching things, but levels of governmental scum have no limits... I mean, I frankly trust my mobile provider (from Austria) and Apple more than my own government. It's not tyrannical, but the way they act you just have zero confidence and trust in them to be honest.

 

You didn't understand, they can already get that information and already have before. the news article is not telling us anything new.  They go asking for that information every time you or your number is associated with something under investigation.  more than 60 agencies already asking every time they are investigating something:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-18/government-releases-list-of-agencies-applying-to-access-metadata/7095836

 

 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No they won't because without an active state of emergency a telco isn't going to do anything and there is still a required legal framework to request such data. Reality is far different than what your mind is making up about the process. Bureaucracy is rife in government, things don't just unilaterally happen.

I get that governments shouldn't be trusted as a general rule, but the paranoia on this forum surrounding perceived motive is unreal at times.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I get that governments shouldn't be trusted as a general rule, but the paranoia on this forum surrounding perceived motive is unreal at times.

I mean fine if you live in a not so democratic country but the list of those countries is far smaller than the ones that actually are. Doesn't seem to matter what the topic country is everything has to be that worst case country, what ever that one is?

 

And for context

 

Civil liberties: 10.00

 

Edit:

Also like to add only 3 countries score a 10.00 for that.

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I mean fine if you live in a not so democratic country but the list of those countries is far smaller than the ones that actually are. Doesn't seem to matter what the topic country is everything has to be that worst case country, what ever that one is?

 

And for context

 

Civil liberties: 10.00

Also forgetting the fact that 99% of what the Australian government does is transparent, I mean,  we are the equivalent of country town with population 50, everyone knows what's going on.  The trick is getting people to care about the 1%er's  where actual injustice is done.