The australian government, wanting to protect the health of its citizens (what else would a government want today?), last April, suggested that they download a contact-tracing application on their mobile phones… To protect them from the bad encounter with… you know who! Given that users (of the application) had to fill in their personal details (name, age, phone number, postal code) in order to activate the “life-saving” application, the good and humanitarian government swore that these details would come into the grip of state and regional health authorities, exclusively, and only in positive cases. Thanks to the application, 17 such cases were detected in all; the remaining hundreds of thousands (how many? we don’t know) of users were, however, assured of the complete privacy of their personal data. Right?
Wrong! It’s like lying down for a nap in the middle of an expressway avenue because the contractor who built it promised you that you would be alone at peace… Totally “inadvertently” the australian intelligence agencies “scooped up” all this personal data, during the first six months of its launch, (ie until last October). “We’re sorry”, the people in charge said (after the disclosure of the “break-in” at one state service by another, if it makes sense to talk like that…) but in the course of the lawful collection of other data (which is permissible under australian law…) we incidentally collected these too… Fortunately, australian law requires anyone who makes such a mistake to delete this incidentally collected personal data as soon as practicable. As – soon – as – technically – possible…
Normally (one would say to those for whom this word still has some meaning) the australians of good faith who have fallen prey to the security “mistake” should become outraged. About the fraud. But the good government (with its intelligence agencies) promised that a committee to investigate how the “mistake” was made; confirming that the agency that took the data did not use it (when it became aware of its mistake…)
And this is a consolation: the criminal undertakes to solve the crime. And since the disciplined australians at first accepted to risk their deception (obviously they don’t know what it is and how easily data… is “stolen”) why not do it again, hoping that the authorities will repentantly respect them?
Gullibility is a very bad thing…