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January 4, 2021 11:30 pm

Singapore Police Can Access COVID-19 Contact Tracing Data For Criminal Investigations

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Singapore has confirmed its law enforcers will be able to access the country's COVID-19 contact tracing data to aid in their criminal investigations. To date, more than 4.2 million residents or 78% of the local population have adopted the TraceTogether contact tracing app and wearable token, which is one of the world's highest penetration rates. [...] In its efforts to ease privacy concerns, the Singapore government had stressed repeatedly that COVID-19 data would "never be accessed unless the user tests positive" for the virus and was contacted by the contact tracing team. Personal data such as unique identification number and mobile number also would be substituted by a random permanent ID and stored on a secured server. However, the Singapore government now has confirmed local law enforcement will be able to access the data for criminal investigations. Under the Criminal Procedure Code, the Singapore Police Force can obtain any data and this includes TraceTogether data, according to Minister of State for Home Affairs, Desmond Tan. He was responding to a question posed during parliament Monday on whether the TraceTogether data would be used for criminal probes and the safeguards governing the use of such data. Tan said the Singapore government was the "custodian" of the contact tracing data and "stringent measures" had been established to safeguard the personal data. "Examples of these measures include only allowing authorized officers to access the data, using such data only for authorized purposes, and storing the data on a secured data platform," he said. He added that public officers who knowingly disclose the data without authorization or misuse the data may be fined up to SG$5,000 or jailed up to two years, or both. Asked if police use of the data violated the TraceTogether privacy pledge, Tan said: "We do not preclude the use of TraceTogether data in circumstances where citizens' safety and security is or has been affected, and this applies to all other data as well." He noted that "authorized police officers" may invoke the Criminal Procedure Code to access TraceTogether data for such purposes as well as for criminal investigation, but this data would, otherwise, be used only for contact tracing and to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0Asai4nut7w/singapore-police-can-access-covid-19-contact-tracing-data-for-criminal-investigations

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