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Aware
The head of an independent agency testing the security of the government’s new COVID-19 tracking application says he will download it, adding that he feels “comfortable” with what he has seen so far.
Key points:
- Rachael Falk says she will download the app
- Agencies testing it to report to the government as soon as today
- The first version of the app is expected to launch this week.
Rachael Falk is the executive director of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Center (CSCRC), which, in a rare move, reached out to the government to do a stress test of the app that will soon be released and provide an independent assessment.
“There is always a lot of noise around anything having to do with a Commonwealth data application,” he told ABC.
“I come from a position in fact, so I can talk about what I’ve seen so far. And so far, I’m comfortable with what I’ve seen.”
When asked if she would opt out and download the app, Ms. Falk said “yes”.
“This is a public health application, it is not a surveillance application,” he said.
The app is designed to overload the contact tracking process after a person tests positive for the coronavirus, and is one of the tools that the Prime Minister hopes can be used to ease the restrictions imposed since the crisis arose.
Using Bluetooth technology, the application “pings” or exchanges a “digital handshake” with another user when they are within 1.5 meters of each other, and then records this contact and encrypts it.
If a person with the app tested positive for COVID-19, they will be asked to download the record and send it to a central server, where their local health authority could access and “decrypt” it.
The Health Department would then call anyone who has been in contact with a COVID-19 case.
Since the app’s announcement, the Government has strived to assure Australians that it will not track locations.
“There doesn’t need to be too much information to track, we just need to know their mobile phone number and their name and the age range of the person who has been identified so they can be properly evaluated,” Falk said.
Falk said the data would be stored only on a person’s phone, unless they tested positive, and that “it was only designed to be accessed by health officials.”
“Tracing is a fairly manual task, so this speeds it up for the health officer,” he said.
“That’s all they do, that’s the only access that will take place.”
The app is still a “hard sell”
Scott Morrison has said that at least 40 percent of the population will need to download the app for it to be effective, a “hard sell” according to Ms. Falk, given that Australians are inherently cynical about the government’s ability to keep their data. in a safe way.
In Singapore, the utilization rate of the TraceTogether app, on which the Australian app was modeled, was only 20%.
Even members of the government are suspicious, with Nationals backbenchers Barnaby Joyce and Llew O’Brien publicly speaking out against the app and declaring they won’t download it.
“There is a lot of talk,” Falk said.
This is in part the reason why his agency reached out to the government to test whether the app meets expectations and actually does what it is intended to do.
“The independent guarantee is really important when you implement an application using any information from Australian citizens,” he said.
In addition to cyber experts at the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the agencies have had access to the code and architecture of the application to assess the level of security from the phone to the server that will store the data.
What the experts say about the coronavirus:
Ms. Falk said that she had not been given full access to the entire process, but that she felt comfortable “given what [she had] viewed “.
“Not much data is shared beyond what is shared in daily transactions,” he said.
ASD and CSCRC are expected to deliver their report to the government as soon as today, and the first “iteration” of the application is expected to launch later this week.
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said yesterday, when the COVID crisis ended, Australians could simply delete the app and “all data will disappear.”
What you need to know about the coronavirus:
Topics:
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