Police access to COVID check-in data is an affront to our privacy. We need stronger and more consistent rules in place

Posted on September 12, 2021 by particularkev

Graham Greenleaf, UNSW and Katharine Kemp, UNSWThe Australian Information Commissioner this week called for a ban on police accessing QR code check-in data, unless for COVID-19 contact tracing purposes.

State police have already accessed this data on at least six occasions for unrelated criminal investigations, including in Queensland and Western Australia — the latter of which has now banned this. Victorian police also attempted access at least three times, according to reports, but were unsuccessful.

The ACT is considering a law preventing police from engaging in such activity, but the position is different in every state and territory.

We need cooperation and clarity regarding how COVID surveillance data is handled, to protect people’s privacy and maintain public trust in surveillance measures. There is currently no consistent, overarching law that governs these various measures — which range from QR code check-ins to vaccine certificates.

Last week the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner released a set of five national COVID-19 privacy principles as a guide to “best practice” for governments and businesses handling personal COVID surveillance data.

But we believe these principles are vague and fail to address a range of issues, including whether or not police can access our data. We propose more detailed and consistent laws to be enacted throughout Australia, covering all COVID surveillance.

Multiple surveillance tools are being used

There are multiple COVID surveillance tools currently in use in Australia.

Proximity tracking through the COVIDSafe app has been available since last year, aiming to identify individuals who have come into contact with an infected person. But despite costing millions to develop, the app has reportedly disclosed only 17 unique unknown cases.

Over the past year we’ve also seen widespread attendance tracking via QR codes, now required by every state and territory government. This is probably the most extensive surveillance operation Australia has ever seen, with millions of check-ins each week. Fake apps have even emerged in an effort to bypass contact tracing.

In addition, COVID status certificates showing vaccination status are now available on MyGov (subject to problems of registration failure and forgery). They don’t yet display COVID test results or COVID recovery status (as they do in countries in the European Union).

It’s unclear exactly where Australian residents will need to show COVID status certificates, but this will likely include for travel between states or local government areas, attendance at events (such as sport events and funerals) and hospitality venues, and in some “no jab no job” workplaces.

As a possible substitute for hotel quarantine, South Australia is currently testing precise location tracking to enable home quarantine. This combines geolocation tracking of phones with facial recognition of the person answering the phone.
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The proposed principles don’t go far enough

The vague privacy principles proposed by Australia’s privacy watchdogs are completely inadequate in the face of this complexity. They are mostly “privacy 101” requirements of existing privacy laws.

Here they are summarised, with some weaknesses noted.

Data minimisation. The personal information collected should be limited to the minimum necessary to achieve a legitimate purpose.
Purpose limitation. Information collected to mitigate COVID-19 risks “should generally not be used for other purposes”. The term “generally” is undefined, and police are not specifically excluded.
Security. “Reasonable steps” should be taken to protect this data. Data localisation (storing it in Australia) is mentioned in the principles, but data encryption is not.
Data retention/deletion. The data should be deleted once no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected. But there is no mention of a “sunset clause” requiring whole surveillance systems to also be dismantled when no longer needed.
Regulation under privacy law. The data should be protected by “an enforceable privacy law to ensure individuals have redress if their information is mishandled”. The implied call for South Australia and Western Australia to enact privacy laws is welcome.

A proposal for detailed and consistent laws

Since COVID-19 surveillance requirements are justified as “emergency measures”, they also require emergency quality protections.

Last year, the federal COVIDSafe Act provided the strongest privacy protections for any category of personal information collected in Australia. Although the app was a dud, the Act was not.

The EU has enacted thorough legislation for EU COVID digital certificates, which are being used across EU country borders. We can learn from this and establish principles that apply to all types of COVID surveillance in Australia. Here’s what we recommend:

Legislation, not regulations, of “emergency quality”. Regulations can be changed at will by the responsible minister, whereas changes in legislation require parliamentary approval. Regarding COVID surveillance data, a separate act in each jurisdiction should state the main rules and there should be no exceptions to these — not even for police or ASIO.
Prevent unjustifiable discrimination. This would include preventing discrimination against those who are unable to get vaccinated such as for health reasons, or those without access to digital technology such as mobile phones. In the EU, it’s free to obtain a paper certificate and these must be accepted.
Prohibit and penalise unauthorised use of data. Permitted uses of surveillance data should be limited, with no exceptions for police or intelligence. COVID status certificates may be abused by employers or venues that decide to grant certain rights privileges based on them, without authorisation by law.
Give individuals the right to sue. If anyone breaches the acts we propose above for each state, individuals concerned should be able to sue in the courts for compensation for an interference with privacy.
Prevent surveillance creep. The law should make it as difficult as possible for any extra uses of the data to be authorised, say for marketing or town planning.
Minimise data collection. The minimum data necessary should be collected, and not collected with other data. If data is only needed for inspection, it should not be retained.
Ongoing data deletion. Data must be deleted periodically once it is no longer needed for pandemic purposes. In the EU, COVID certificate data inspected for border crossings is not recorded or retained.
A “sunset clause” for the whole system. Emergency measures should provide for their own termination. The law requires the COVIDSafe app to be terminated when it’s no longer required or effective, along with its data. A similar plan should be in place for QR-code data and COVID status certificates.
Active supervision and reports. Privacy authorities should have clear obligations to report on COVID surveillance operations, and express views on termination of the system.
Transparency. Overarching all of these principles should be requirements for transparency. This should include publicly releasing medical/epidemiological advice on necessary measures, open-source software in all cases of digital COVID surveillance, initial privacy impact assessments and sunset clause recommendations.

COVID-19 has necessitated the most pervasive surveillance most of us have ever experienced. But such surveillance is really only justifiable as an emergency measure. It must not become a permanent part of state surveillance.

Graham Greenleaf, Professor of Law and Information Systems, UNSW and Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Growing evidence suggests Russia’s Sputnik V COVID vaccine is safe and very effective. But questions about the data remain

Posted on July 29, 2021 by particularkev

Megan Steain, University of Sydney and Jamie Triccas, University of SydneyRussia was the first country to register a COVID vaccine, with its health ministry giving emergency approval to the Sputnik V vaccine in August 2020.

This decision was met with scepticism from the international scientific community because it came a month before results of phase 1 and 2 trials were published.

Growing data from clinical trials and real world rollouts suggests the vaccine is safe and very effective. But there are several outstanding questions around the vaccine, such as whether it’s associated with the very rare blood clotting condition seen with AstraZeneca’s vaccine, and how well it performs against variants of the coronavirus.

So what kind of vaccine is Sputnik V, how does it work, and what data are we missing?

How does Sputnik V work?

Sputnik V was designed by The Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology. It has its very own Twitter account advertising its status as the “world’s first registered COVID-19 vaccine” and approval in 69 countries including Russia, South Korea, Argentina and the UAE.

Like the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the basis for the vaccine is a harmless form of adenovirus, one of several viruses that can cause the common cold.

The adenovirus acts as a packaging system for DNA to deliver instructions to our cells. This DNA instructs cells to make the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2. The immune system is then trained to generate an immune response to the spike protein, which provides protection against the real SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Unlike the other adenovirus-based vaccines, Sputnik V uses two different adenoviruses for the first and second dose. This is done as people can develop an immune response against the adenovirus vector used in the first shot of the vaccine, which could possibly reduce the overall effectiveness.

The two doses are separated by three weeks, rather than the 8-12 weeks usually recommended for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Sputnik V doesn’t require the ultra-cold temperatures like the mRNA-based vaccines, which makes it an attractive candidate for many countries desperate for vaccines. Gamaleya has been open to sharing its manufacturing platform, unlike some other vaccines.

How well does Sputnik V work against COVID-19?

Data from the phase 1 and 2 clinical trial was published in September in the highly reputed medical journal The Lancet. The data showed no major adverse reactions, and side effects that were common to the other COVID-19 vaccines. These were primarily fever, headaches and pain at the injection site.

Most impressively were the results of the larger phase 3 trial published in The Lancet in February this year, which reported 91.6% efficacy against symptomatic infection. This places Sputnik on par with the mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, for which the original efficacies were 95% and 94.1% respectively.

The results from the phase 3 trial also suggested a single dose was protective, with an efficacy of 79.4%. This led to the approval of “Sputnik Light” in some countries, a single dose regimen that overcomes some of the issues manufacturing the second dose of Sputnik V. The two different adenoviruses used in the first and second dose of Sputnik V need to be produced using separate cell cultures. Only having to produce a single type of adenovirus streamlines the production.

Outside of these trials, a press release from Gamaleya says real world analysis of the vaccine given to nearly 3.8 million Russians reported an efficacy of 97.6% against infection. This led Gamaleya to claim Sputnik V is “the world’s most effective vaccine”.

Despite the encouraging efficacy results, there are still some concerns. Both the phase 1 and 2 safety trials, and the phase 3 efficacy trials, have been criticised for not sharing their raw data or the full details of their study design, as well as inconsistencies in the published data.

Sputnik V isn’t yet approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) or the World Health Organization, meaning it cannot be used by COVAX, the COVID vaccine global access initiative. Gamaleya has yet to provide the EMA with all the necessary manufacturing and clinical data necessary to gain this approval.

What are the unanswered questions about Sputnik V?

There are a number of outstanding issues with the vaccine.

Of particular importance is the question of whether it’s associated with the very rare blood clotting condition that’s been linked to the AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines, which also use adenovirus vectors.

Gamaleya claims there have been no reports of this occurring in individuals given Sputnik V. Analysis following the administration of 2.8 million doses of Sputnik V in Argentina supports this. The results, announced via a press release by the Argentine health ministry, reported no deaths associated with vaccination and showed mostly mild adverse events.

And there was no indication of an association between Sputnik V and this condition in the clinical trials.

However, there hasn’t been enough published real world data to be completely confident researchers would be able to pick up on the condition if it did emerge.

It’s also unclear how well Sputnik performs against the rapidly spreading variants of concern, such as Delta. Some of these variants are partially able to escape from the immune response generated by COVID vaccines.

Research published in July examined antibodies in the blood of people vaccinated with Sputnik V to see how it performed against the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. It found there was a reduction in the ability of their antibodies to block infection. It’s unclear how this reduction would impact the vaccine’s effectiveness against hospitalisation and death, as we’re still waiting to see published real world data on this.

We need further studies which directly compare blood samples from people vaccinated with the different vaccines before Sputnik’s claims of being highly effective against variants can be confirmed. We’ll also need to see real world analysis of its effectiveness against variants, such as that performed with Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

Megan Steain, Lecturer, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney and Jamie Triccas, Professor of Medical Microbiology, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Privacy erosion by design: why the Federal Court should throw the book at Google over location data tracking

Posted on April 21, 2021 by particularkev

Jeannie Marie Paterson, The University of Melbourne and Elise Bant, The University of Western AustraliaThe Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has had a significant win against Google. The Federal Court found Google misled some Android users about how to disable personal location tracking.

Will this decision actually change the behaviour of the big tech companies? The answer will depend on the size of the penalty awarded in response to the misconduct.

In theory, the penalty is A$1.1 million per contravention. There is a contravention each time a reasonable person in the relevant class is misled. So the total award could, in theory, amount to many millions of dollars.

But the actual penalty will depend on how the court characterises the misconduct. We believe Google’s behaviour should not be treated as a simple accident, and the Federal Court should issue a heavy fine to deter Google and other companies from behaving this way in future.

Misleading conduct and privacy settings

The case arose from the representations made by Google to users of Android phones in 2018 about how it obtained personal location data.

The Federal Court held Google had misled some consumers by representing that “having Web & App Activity turned ‘on’ would not allow Google to obtain, retain and use personal data about the user’s location”.

In other words, some consumers were misled into thinking they could control Google’s location data collection practices by switching “off” Location History, whereas Web & App Activity also needed to be disabled to provide this protection.

The ACCC also argued consumers reading Google’s privacy statement would be misled into thinking personal data was collected for their own benefit rather than Google’s. However, the court dismissed this argument on the grounds that reasonable users wanting to turn the Location History “off”

would have assumed that Google was obtaining as much commercial advantage as it could from use of the user’s personal location data.

This is surprising and might deserve further attention from regulators concerned to protect consumers from corporations “data harvesting” for profit.

How much should Google pay?

The penalty and other enforcement orders against Google will be made at a later date.

The aim of the penalty is to deter Google specifically, and other firms like Google, from engaging in misleading conduct again. If penalties are too low they may be treated by wrongdoing firms as merely a “cost of doing business”.

However, in circumstances where there is a high degree of corporate culpability, the Federal Court has shown willingness to award higher amounts than in the past. This has occurred even where the regulator has not sought higher penalties. In the recent Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft v ACCC judgement, the full Federal Court confirmed an award of A$125 million against Volkswagen for making false representations about compliance with Australian diesel emissions standards.

The Federal Court found Google’s information about local data tracking was misleading.
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In setting Google’s penalty, a court will consider factors such as the nature and extent of the misleading conduct and any loss to consumers. The court will also take into account whether the wrongdoer was involved in “deliberate, covert or reckless conduct, as opposed to negligence or carelessness”.

At this point, Google may well argue that only some consumers were misled, that it was possible for consumers to be informed if they read more about Google’s privacy policies, that it was only one slip-up, and that its contravention of the law was unintentional. These might seem to reduce the seriousness or at least the moral culpability of the offence.

But we argue they should not unduly cap the penalty awarded. Google’s conduct may not appear as “egregious and deliberately deceptive” as the Volkswagen case.

But equally Google is a massively profitable company that makes its money precisely from obtaining, sorting and using its users’ personal data. We think therefore the court should look at the number of Android users potentially affected by the misleading conduct and Google’s responsibility for its own choice architecture, and work from there.

Only some consumers?

The Federal Court acknowledged not all consumers would be misled by Google’s representations. The court accepted many consumers would simply accept the privacy terms without reviewing them, an outcome consistent with the so-called privacy paradox. Others would review the terms and click through to more information about the options for limiting Google’s use of personal data to discover the scope of what was collected under the “Web & App Activity” default.

This might sound like the court was condoning consumers’ carelessness. In fact the court made use of insights from economists about the behavioural biases of consumers in making decisions.

Consumers have limited time to read legal terms and limited ability to understand the future risks arising from those terms. Thus, if consumers are concerned about privacy they might try to limit data collection by selecting various options, but are unlikely to be able to read and understand privacy legalese like a trained lawyer or with the background understanding of a data scientist.

If one option is labelled “Location History”, it is entirely rational for everyday consumers to assume turning it off limits location data collection by Google.

The number of consumers misled by Google’s representations will be difficult to assess. But even if a small proportion of Android users were misled, that will be a very large number of people.

There was evidence before the Federal Court that, after press reports of the tracking problem, the number of consumers switching off the “Web” option increased by 500%. Moreover, Google makes considerable profit from the large amounts of personal data it gathers and retains, and profit is important when it comes deterrence.

Google’s choice architecture

It has also been revealed that some employees at Google were not aware of the problem until an exposé in the press. An urgent meeting was held, referred to internally as the “Oh Shit” meeting.

The individual Google employees at the “Oh Shit” meeting may not have been aware of the details of the system. But that is not the point.

It is the company fault that is the question. And a company’s culpability is not just determined by what some executive or senior employee knew or didn’t know about its processes. Google’s corporate mindset is manifested or revealed in the systems it designs and puts in place.

Google designed the information system that faced consumers trying to manage their privacy settings. This kind of system design is sometimes referred to as “choice architecture”.

Here the choices offered to consumers steered them away from opting out of Google collecting, retaining and using personal location data.

The “Other Options” (for privacy) information failed to refer to the fact that location tracking was carried out via other processes beyond the one labelled “Location History”. Plus, the default option for “Web & App Activity” (which included location tracking) was set as “on”.

This privacy eroding system arose via the design of the “choice architecture”. It therefore warrants a serious penalty.

Jeannie Marie Paterson, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne and Elise Bant, Professor of Law, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ACCC ‘world first’: Australia’s Federal Court found Google misled users about personal location data

Posted on April 21, 2021 by particularkev

Katharine Kemp, UNSWThe Federal Court has found Google misled some users about personal location data collected through Android devices for two years, from January 2017 to December 2018.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) says this decision is a “world first” in relation to Google’s location privacy settings. The ACCC now intends to seek various orders against Google. These will include monetary penalties under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), which could be up to A$10 million or 10% of Google’s local turnover.

Other companies too should be warned that representations in their privacy policies and privacy settings could lead to similar liability under the ACL.

But this won’t be a complete solution to the problem of many companies concealing what they do with data, including the way they share consumers’ personal information.

How did Google mislead consumers about their location history?

The Federal Court found Google’s previous location history settings would have led some reasonable consumers to believe they could prevent their location data being saved to their Google account. In fact, selecting “Don’t save my Location History in my Google Account” alone could not achieve this outcome.

Users needed to change an additional, separate setting to stop location data from being saved to their Google account. In particular, they needed to navigate to “Web & App Activity” and select “Don’t save my Web & App Activity to my Google Account”, even if they had already selected the “Don’t save” option under “Location History”.

ACCC Chair Rod Sims responded to the Federal Court’s findings, saying:

This is an important victory for consumers, especially anyone concerned about their privacy online, as the Court’s decision sends a strong message to Google and others that big businesses must not mislead their customers.

Google has since changed the way these settings are presented to consumers, but is still liable for the conduct the court found was likely to mislead some reasonable consumers for two years in 2017 and 2018.

ACCC has misleading privacy policies in its sights

This is the second recent case in which the ACCC has succeeded in establishing misleading conduct in a company’s representations about its use of consumer data.

In 2020, the medical appointment booking app HealthEngine admitted it had disclosed more than 135,000 patients’ non-clinical personal information to insurance brokers without the informed consent of those patients. HealthEngine paid fines of A$2.9 million, including approximately A$1.4 million relating to this misleading conduct.

The ACCC has two similar cases in the wings, including another case regarding Google’s privacy-related notifications and a case about Facebook’s representations about a supposedly privacy-enhancing app called Onavo.

In bringing proceedings against companies for misleading conduct in their privacy policies, the ACCC is following the US Federal Trade Commission which has sued many US companies for misleading privacy policies.

The ACCC has more cases in the wings about data privacy.
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Will this solve the problem of confusing and unfair privacy policies?

The ACCC’s success against Google and HealthEngine in these cases sends an important message to companies: they must not mislead consumers when they publish privacy policies and privacy settings. And they may receive significant fines if they do.

However, this will not be enough to stop companies from setting privacy-degrading terms for their users, if they spell such conditions out in the fine print. Such terms are currently commonplace, even though consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy and want more privacy options.

Consider the US experience. The US Federal Trade Commission brought action against the creators of a flashlight app for publishing a privacy policy which didn’t reveal the app was tracking and sharing users’ location information with third parties.

However, in the agreement settling this claim, the solution was for the creators to rewrite the privacy policy to disclose that users’ location and device ID data are shared with third parties. The question of whether this practice was legitimate or proportionate was not considered.

Major changes to Australian privacy laws will also be required before companies will be prevented from pervasively tracking consumers who do not wish to be tracked. The current review of the federal Privacy Act could be the beginning of a process to obtain fairer privacy practices for consumers, but any reforms from this review will be a long time coming.

This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on UNSW Newsroom.

Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UNSW, and Academic Lead, UNSW Grand Challenge on Trust, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How safe are your data when you book a COVID vaccine?

Posted on April 15, 2021 by particularkev

Joan Henderson, University of Sydney and Kerin Robinson, La Trobe UniversityThe Australian government has appointed the commercial company HealthEngine to establish a national booking system for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Selected through a Department of Health limited select tender process, the platform is being used by vaccine providers who don’t have their own booking system.

However, HealthEngine has a track record of mishandling confidential patient information.

Previous problems

In 2019 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took HealthEngine to court for allegedly skewing reviews and ratings of medical practices on its platform and selling more than 135,000 patients’ details to private health insurance brokers.

The Federal Court fined HealthEngine A$2.9 million in August 2020, just eight months ago.

Department of Health associate secretary Caroline Edwards told a Senate hearing the issues were “historical in nature, weren’t intentional and did not involve the sharing of clinical or medical related information”.

How might the alleged misconduct, which earned HealthEngine A$1.8 million, be considered “historical in nature” and “not intentional”?

Edwards added that HealthEngine had strengthened its privacy and security processes, following recommendations in the ACCC’s digital platforms inquiry report. Regarding the new contract, she said:

[…] the data available to HealthEngine through what it’s been contracted to do does not include any clinical information or any personal information over what’s required for people to book.

That’s somewhat reassuring, considering the larger amount of information usually requested from patients booking an appointment (as per HealthEngine’s current Privacy Policy).

The list of personal information HealthEngine may collect from patients booking an appointment with a health professional.
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Importantly, HealthEngine then owns this information. This raises an important question: why is so much personal information requested just to book an ordinary appointment?

A need for accessible information

While using HealthEngine to book a vaccination is not mandatory, individual practices will determine whether patients can make appointments over the phone, are directed to use HealthEngine’s platform, or another existing platform.

Personal details currently requested through HealthEngine’s vaccination booking system are:

HealthEngine’s Privacy Policy for COVID-19 vaccination bookings.
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This list is substantially shorter than the one concerning non-COVID related bookings. That said, there’s still more information being gathered than would be required for the sole purpose of arranging a patient’s vaccination.

What is the justification for this system to collect data about patients’ non-COVID medical and health services, or the pages they visit?

A representative from the Department of Health told The Conversation that all patient data collected through the COVID vaccination booking system was owned by the department, not HealthEngine. But what need would the department have to collect web analytics data about what sites a patient visits?

An underlying administrative principle of any medical appointment platform is that it should collect the minimum amount of data needed to fulfil its purpose.

Also, HealthEngine’s website reveals the company has, appropriately, created an additional privacy policy for its COVID-19 vaccination booking platform. However, this is currently embedded within its pre-existing policy. Therefore it’s unlikely many people will find, let alone read it.

For transparency, the policy should be easy to find, clearly labelled and presented as distinct from HealthEngine’s regular policies. A standalone page would be feasible, given the value of the contract is more than A$3.8 million.

What protections are in place?

Since the pandemic began, concerns have been raised regarding the lack of clear information and data privacy protection afforded to patients by commercial organisations.

Luckily, there are safeguards in place to regulate how patient data are handled. The privacy of data generated through health-care provision (such as in general practices, hospitals, community health centres and pharmacies) is protected under state and territory or Commonwealth laws.

Data reported (on a compulsory basis) by vaccinating clinicians to the Australian Immunisation Register fall within the confines of the Australian Immunisation Register Act 2015 and its February 2021 amendment.

Also, data collected through the Department of Health’s vaccination registration system are legally protected under the Privacy Act 1988, as are data collected via HealthEngine’s government-approved COVID-19 vaccination booking system.

But there’s still a lack of clarity regarding what patients are being asked to consent to, the amount of information collected and how it’s handled. It’s a critical legal and ethical requirement patients have the right to consent to the use of their personal information.

If the privacy policy of a booking system is unclear, this presents risk for patients who have challenges with the English language, literacy, or are potentially distracted by pain or anxiety while making an appointment.
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Gaps in our knowledge

As health information managers, we had further questions regarding the government’s decision to appoint HealthEngine as a national COVID-19 vaccination booking provider. The Conversation put these questions to HealthEngine, which forwarded them to the Department of Health. They were as follows.

Is there justification for the rushed outsourcing of the national appointment platform, given the number of vaccine recipients whose data will be collected?
How did the department’s “limited select tender” process ensure equity?
Who will own data collected via HealthEngine’s optional national booking system?
What rights will the “owner” of the data have to give third-party access via the sharing or selling of data?
What information will vaccine recipients be given on their right to not use HealthEngine’s COVID-19 vaccination booking system (or any appointment booking system) if they’re uncomfortable providing personal information to a commercial entity?
How will these individuals be reassured they may still receive a vaccine, should they not wish to use the system?

In response, a department representative provided information already available online here, here, here and here. They gave no clarification about how patients might be guided if they’re directed to the HealthEngine platform but don’t want to use it.

They advised the data collected by HealthEngine:

can not be used for secondary purposes, and can only be disclosed to third-party entities as described in HealthEngine’s tailored Privacy Policy and Collection Notice, as well as the department’s Privacy Notice.

But according to HealthEngine’s privacy policy, this means patient data could still be provided to other health professionals a patient selects, and de-identified information given to the Department of Health. The policy states HealthEngine may also disclose patients’ personal information to:

third-party IT and software providers such as Adobe Analytics
professional advisers such as lawyers and auditors, for the purpose of providing goods or services to HealthEngine
courts, tribunals and law enforcement, as required by law or to defend HealthEngine’s legal rights and
others parties, as consented to by the patient, or as required by law.

Ideally, the answers to our questions would have helped shed light on the extent to which patient privacy was considered in the government’s decision. But inconsistencies between what is presented in the privacy policies and the Department of Health’s response have not clarified this.

Joan Henderson, Senior Research Fellow (Hon). Editor, Health Information Management Journal (HIMJ), University of Sydney and Kerin Robinson, Adjunct Associate Professor, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The AstraZeneca vaccine and over-65s: we may not have all the data yet, but limiting access could be counterproductive

Posted on February 3, 2021 by particularkev

Kylie Quinn, RMIT University

Last week, a German vaccine advisory committee recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine only be used in 18-64-year-olds, citing a lack of data on the efficacy of the vaccine in people over 65.

Subsequently, the European regulator, the European Medicines Agency, conditionally approved the vaccine for anyone over 18.

What can we make of this? Should we be giving this vaccine to older people or not?

While we don’t yet have all the data we’d like, we don’t have reason to believe this vaccine won’t be at least somewhat effective in older adults. To exclude them from receiving it wouldn’t necessarily be the right approach.

The recommendation

STIKO, a German vaccine advisory committee that reports to the country’s government, was responsible for the draft recommendation which caused the stir. It released a similar final recommendation at the weekend.

While the German government may elect to follow STIKO’s advice or the European Medicines Agency’s guidelines, the latter’s approval carries significant weight. Equivalent to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia, this body decides which vaccines may legally be supplied in Europe.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has already received approvals, not singling out older age groups, from multiple international regulators, including those in the United Kingdom, India and Mexico.

Why did STIKO make this recommendation?

STIKO’s advice is based on the fact it didn’t have enough data to definitively say whether the vaccine will work in older people — not because it won’t.

According to the data we have so far from AstraZeneca’s phase 3 trials, only two out of 660 people in the trial aged over 65 got sick with COVID-19. Two sick people isn’t enough for a strong statistical analysis.

AstraZeneca initially enrolled younger people in its trials, with older people enrolled only later. So data on older people in the original trials and another trial in the United States are still on the way.

A doctor prepares to vaccinate a grey-haired woman. — AstraZeneca’s early trials didn’t include as many older people as younger people.
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What do we know about the vaccine?

We have very good safety data for the AstraZeneca vaccine in older people. Older people actually have significantly lower levels of early side effects after vaccination. This makes sense, as older people’s immune systems don’t tend to react as strongly to vaccines, which would reduce many of these early side effects.

But the vaccine has been shown to induce strong immune responses in older people, which are likely to provide a degree of protection. The European Medicine Agency’s press release on their decision refers to a reasonable likelihood of protection based on this data.

So, just looking at immune responses, it’s reasonable to anticipate the AstraZeneca vaccine will be of some benefit, at least, to older people.

What do we know from other vaccines?

Often, vaccines aren’t as effective in older people as compared to younger people, because their immune responses can be less robust. For example, in 2010-2011 in the US, the flu vaccine was 60% effective in the general population, but only 38% effective in people over 65.

There’s more information on efficacy in older people for other COVID-19 vaccines. Notably, the Pfizer vaccine maintained efficacy of 93.7% for people over 55, compared to 95% overall. Accordingly, it would be reasonable to prioritise the Pfizer vaccine for older people.

But we’re beginning to see that vaccine supply and distribution can be unpredictable, with supply issues for Pfizer and AstraZeneca starting to affect vaccine rollout.

Importantly, all COVID-19 vaccines assessed so far, including the AstraZeneca vaccine, provide a high level of protection against severe disease and death across variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

A health-care worker administers a vaccine to a senior man. — Older people are more susceptible to the coronavirus.
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Limiting access limits options for older people

The question that advisory committees and regulators are weighing up is, should the AstraZeneca vaccine, or any vaccine, be recommended for older people if we know:

the vaccine has low risk of side effects
the vaccine has a fair but unconfirmed likelihood of providing some benefit
COVID-19 has a higher likelihood of severe disease and death in the demographic.

This is tricky to navigate and advice may differ across different vaccines and countries. For example, China is delaying vaccine rollout to older people while it waits for more data.

But conditional approval is a reasonable path to take. It allows for some uncertainty and maintains contact with the manufacturer. It also recognises that the likely benefit of giving older people any available vaccine could outweigh the hypothetical risk that it might not work in the midst of a crushing pandemic.

In any case, approvals from regulators, such as the European Medicines Agency and the TGA, have the most impact — defining who the vaccine can be supplied to in a country.

If regulatory guidelines are kept open to all age groups above 18, it will facilitate access to vaccines for many people who could benefit from them. The next steps are distributing these vaccines, and educating and updating the public with the latest information as it comes to hand.

Crucially, we should support older people in vaccine decisions with two things; good information and easy access to an array of safe, protective vaccines.

Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Data from 45 countries show containing COVID vs saving the economy is a false dichotomy

Posted on November 28, 2020 by particularkev

Michael Smithson, Australian National University

There is no doubt the COVID-19 crisis has incurred widespread economic costs. There is understandable concern that stronger measures against the virus, from social distancing to full lockdowns, worsen its impact on economies.

As a result, there has been a tendency to consider the problem as a trade-off between health and economic costs.

This view, for example, has largely defined the approach of the US federal government. “I think we’ve learned that if you shut down the economy, you’re going to create more damage,” said US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in June, as the Trump administration resisted calls to decisively combat the nation’s second COVID wave.

But the notion of a trade-off is not supported by data from countries around the world. If anything, the opposite may be true.

Data from 45 nations

Let’s examine available data for 45 nations from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, using COVID-19 data and economic indicators.

The COVID-19 statistics we’ll focus on are deaths per million of population. No single indicator is perfect, and these rates don’t always reflect contextual factors that apply to specific countries, but this indicator allows us to draw a reasonably accurate global picture.

The economic indicators we’ll examine are among those most widely used for overall evaluations of national economic performance. Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is an index of national wealth. Exports and imports measure a country’s international economic activity. Private consumption expenditure is an indicator of how an economy is travelling.

Effects on GDP per capita

Our first chart plots nations’ deaths per million from COVID-19 against the percentage change in per capita GDP during the second quarter of 2020.

The size of each data point shows the scale of deaths per million as of June 30, using a logarithmic, or “log”, scale – a way to display a very wide range of values in compact graphical form.

Log(deaths per million) by percentage change in Q2 2020 GDP per capita.

If suppressing the virus, thereby leading to fewer deaths per million, resulted in worse national economic downturns, then the “slope” in figure 1 would be positive. But the opposite is true, with the overall correlation being -0.412.

The two outliers are China, in the upper-left corner, with a positive change in GDP per capita, and India at the bottom. China imposed successful hard lockdowns and containment procedures that meant economic effects were limited. India imposed an early hard lockdown but its measures since have been far less effective. Removing both from our data leaves a correlation of -0.464.

Exports and imports

Our second chart shows the relationship between deaths per million and percentage change in exports.

If there was a clear trade-off between containing the virus and enabling international trade, we would see a positive relationship between the changes in exports and death-rates. Instead, there appears to be no relationship.

Log(deaths per million) by percentage change in Q2 2020 exports.

Our third chart shows the relationship between deaths per million and percentage change in imports. As with exports, a trade-off would show in a positive relationship. But there is no evidence of such a relationship here either.

Log(deaths per million) by percentage change in Q2 2020 imports.

Consumer spending

Our fourth chart shows the relationship between deaths per million and percentage change in private consumption expenditure. This complements the picture we get from imports and exports, by tracking consumer spending as an indicator of internal economic activity.

Log(deaths per million) by percentage change in Q2 2020 private consumption.

Again, no positive relationship. Instead, the overall negative relationship suggests those countries that succeeded (at least temporarily) in suppressing the virus were better off economically than those countries adopting a more laissez-faire approach.

National wealth

As a postscript to this brief investigation, let’s take a quick look at whether greater national wealth seems to have helped countries deal with the virus.

Our fifth and final chart plots cases per million (not deaths per million) against national GDP per capita.

Log(GDP per capita) by log(cases per million).

If wealthier countries were doing better at suppressing transmission, the relationship should be negative. Instead, the clusters by region suggest it’s a combination of culture and politics driving the effectiveness of nations’ responses (or lack thereof).

In fact, if we examine the largest cluster, of European countries (the green dots), the relationship between GDP per capita and case rates is positive (0.379) – the opposite of what we would expect.

It’s not a zero-sum game

The standard economic indicators reviewed here show, overall, countries that have contained the virus also tend to have had less severe economic impacts than those that haven’t.

No one should be misled into believing there is zero-sum choice between saving lives and saving the economy. That is a false dichotomy.

If there is anything to be learned regarding how to deal with future pandemics, it is that rapidly containing the pandemic may well lessen its economic impact.

Michael Smithson, Professor, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Very convincing evidence’: Pfizer now has the data it needs to apply for COVID vaccine approval

Posted on November 22, 2020 by particularkev

Kylie Quinn, RMIT University

On Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their mRNA vaccine has demonstrated a remarkable 95% efficacy in the “final efficacy analysis” of its phase 3 trial.

The news comes hot on the heels of Pfizer/BioNTech’s interim analysis last week, which pointed to greater than 90% efficacy, and Moderna’s announcement on Monday, also based on an interim analysis, that its vaccine is 94.5% efficacious.

The word “efficacy” describes how well the vaccine offers protection against the target disease during the trial, whereas the word “effectiveness” refers to how well the vaccine protects against the disease in the real world.

This “final efficacy analysis” represents the Pfizer/BioNTech study’s “primary endpoint” — which means there are enough volunteers in the study who have developed COVID-19 to perform a solid evaluation of whether the vaccine is working.

Before the study began, statisticians designing the study identified that 164 people with confirmed COVID-19 would be enough cases to evaluate efficacy (more than 43,000 participants are enrolled in the trial in total).

There were 94 people who had COVID-19 in the interim analysis last week, and they reached 170 people this week — 162 of whom got the placebo and only eight of whom received the vaccine. This is very convincing evidence that this vaccine protects against developing COVID-19 disease.

The fact the primary endpoint was reached so quickly indicates cases are surging in the United States across a lot of the sites where the trial is taking place. Yes, these surging cases are providing more data than anticipated for phase 3 clinical studies; but they also highlight the urgency of the situation in the US.

Deeper insights

Pfizer/BioNTech have provided three additional important pieces of information.

First, the vaccine appears to be safe. Volunteers in the study were asked to report different symptoms after receiving the vaccine, and the most common symptoms of note were fatigue and headaches (3.8% of participants experienced more severe fatigue, and 2% headaches).

Second, the vaccine appears to protect against severe disease. The trial saw ten people become severely unwell with COVID-19, only one of whom had received the vaccine. This is a huge relief, because severe COVID-19 puts immense pressure on health-care systems.

Third, they’ve reported the vaccine has 94% efficacy in older people. This is crucial as older adults are bearing the brunt of COVID-19. In Australia, people over 65 make up only 20% of cases but almost 50% of all ICU admissions and more than 95% of deaths from COVID-19.

This efficacy in older people exceeds what many researchers had anticipated, as vaccines often don’t work as well in this group.

An elderly lady wearing a mask walks with a frame in a garden. — The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine appears to work equally well in older people.
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It’s not a competition

The Moderna vaccine has also shown promising results on those first two measures — safety and protecting against severe disease. We await data on its efficacy in older people.

This rapid-fire succession of press releases may feel like Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are competing for the “biggest” efficacy, but competition is not the driving factor.

The primary endpoints are pre-defined by both companies and, when the study reaches them, an interim or final analysis can be performed. Data and safety monitoring boards, independent from the companies, perform these analyses.

From a scientific perspective, it’s plausible these two vaccines would have similar efficacy, because they use very similar mRNA vaccine designs. In fact, it’s reassuring they are similar because, in science, we must be able to repeat our results. This gives us confidence the data are correct and that we’ll see similar results outside the lab.

In any scenario, competition is redundant when you consider the size of the problem. Nearly eight billion people around the world urgently need a vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have each indicated they can make enough vaccines for around 500 million people next year. That still leaves seven billion people needing a vaccine — more than enough of a market for both companies, and more.

Any way you look at it, the real competition is against the virus.

What’s next?

In the coming days, Pfizer/BioNTech will apply to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an emergency use approval for their vaccine. Moderna and other vaccine developers likely won’t be far behind once they reach their primary endpoints.

Applications to other regulatory bodies around the world will follow, including the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia. A successful emergency use approval with the FDA can accelerate approvals with other bodies.

This study will continue for two years to collect “secondary endpoints” — more in-depth details on how the vaccine works and its safety longer term. It will aim to answer three important questions:

longevity: how long the vaccine protects people for
infection: these latest results show that the vaccine prevents people from getting sick and showing symptoms of COVID-19. But we also need to see whether the vaccine protects people from getting infected in the first place
transmission: whether the vaccine reduces the likelihood of an infected but vaccinated person passing the virus on to another person.

It’s fairly straightforward to measure whether a vaccine prevents people from developing disease — you wait for people to report symptoms that could be COVID-19 and then perform a COVID test. Longer timelines and more complicated, laborious lab work are needed to learn about longevity, infection and transmission.

So, there are more insights into the virus and vaccines to come. But these studies are an exciting landmark in vaccine development.

Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

83% of Australians want tougher privacy laws. Now’s your chance to tell the government what you want

Posted on November 14, 2020 by particularkev

Normann Witzleb, Monash University

Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter has called for submissions to the long-awaited review of the federal Privacy Act 1988.

This is the first wide-ranging review of privacy laws since the Australian Law Reform Commission produced a landmark report in 2008.

Australia has in the past often hesitated to adopt a strong privacy framework. The new review, however, provides an opportunity to improve data protection rules to an internationally competitive standard.

Here are some of the ideas proposed — and what’s at stake if we get this wrong.

Australians care deeply about data privacy

Personal information has never had a more central role in our society and economy, and the government has a strong mandate to update Australia’s framework for the protection of personal information.

In the Australian Privacy Commissioner’s 2020 survey, 83% of Australians said they’d like the government to do more to protect the privacy of their data.

The intense debate about the COVIDSafe app earlier this year also shows Australians care deeply about their private information, even in a time of crisis.

Privacy laws and enforcement can hardly keep up with the ever-increasing digitalisation of our lives. Data-driven innovation provides valuable services that many of us use and enjoy. However, the government’s issues paper notes:

As Australians spend more of their time online, and new technologies emerge, such as artificial intelligence, more personal information about individuals is being captured and processed, raising questions as to whether Australian privacy law is fit for purpose.

The pandemic has accelerated the existing trend towards digitalisation and created a range of new privacy issues including working or studying at home, and the use of personal data in contact tracing.

Australians are rightly concerned they are losing control over their personal data.

So there’s no question the government’s review is sorely needed.

Issues of concern for the new privacy review

The government’s review follows the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry, which found that some data practices of digital platforms are unfair and undermine consumer trust. We rely heavily on digital platforms such as Google and Facebook for information, entertainment and engagement with the world around us.

Our interactions with these platforms leave countless digital traces that allow us to be profiled and tracked for profit. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found that the digital platforms make it hard for consumers to resist these practices and to make free and informed decisions regarding the collection, use and disclosure of their personal data.

The government has committed to implement most of the ACCC’s recommendations for stronger privacy laws to give us greater consumer control.

However, the reforms must go further. The review also provides an opportunity to address some long-standing weaknesses of Australia’s privacy regime.

The government’s issues paper, released to inform the review, identified several areas of particular concern. These include:

the scope of application of the Privacy Act, in particular the definition of “personal information” and current private sector exemptions
whether the Privacy Act provides an effective framework for promoting good privacy practices
whether individuals should have a direct right to sue for a breach of privacy obligations under the Privacy Act
whether a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy should be introduced into Australian law, allowing Australians to go to court if their privacy is invaded
whether the enforcement powers of the Privacy Commissioner should be strengthened.

While most recent attention relates to improving consumer choice and control over their personal data, the review also brings back onto the agenda some never-implemented recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2008 review.

These include introducing a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy, and extending the coverage of the Privacy Act.

Exemptions for small business and political parties should be reviewed

The Privacy Act currently contains several exemptions that limit its scope. The two most contentious exemptions have the effect that political parties and most business organisations need not comply with the general data protection standards under the Act.

The small business exemption is intended to reduce red tape for small operators. However, largely unknown to the Australian public, it means the vast majority of Australian businesses are not legally obliged to comply with standards for fair and safe handling of personal information.

Procedures for compulsory venue check-ins under COVID health regulations are just one recent illustration of why this is a problem. Some people have raised concerns that customers’ contact-tracing data, in particular collected via QR codes, may be exploited by marketing companies for targeted advertising.

A woman uses a QR code at a restaurant — Under current privacy laws, cafe and restaurant operators are exempt from complying with certain privacy obligations.
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Under current privacy laws, cafe and restaurant operators are generally exempt from complying with privacy obligations to undertake due diligence checks on third-party providers used to collect customers’ data.

The political exemption is another area of need of reform. As the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal showed, political campaigning is becoming increasingly tech-driven.

However, Australian political parties are exempt from complying with the Privacy Act and anti-spam legislation. This means voters cannot effectively protect themselves against data harvesting for political purposes and micro-targeting in election campaigns through unsolicited text messages.

There is a good case for arguing political parties and candidates should be subject to the same rules as other organisations. It’s what most Australians would like and, in fact, wrongly believe is already in place.

Trust drives innovation

Trust in digital technologies is undermined when data practices come across as opaque, creepy or unsafe.

There is increasing recognition that data protection drives innovation and adoption of modern applications, rather than impedes it.

A woman looks at her phone in the twilight. — Trust in digital technologies is undermined when data practices come across as opaque, creepy, or unsafe.
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The COVIDSafe app is a good example.
When that app was debated, the government accepted that robust privacy protections were necessary to achieve a strong uptake by the community.

We would all benefit if the government saw that this same principle applies to other areas of society where our precious data is collected.

Information on how to make a submission to the federal government review of the Privacy Act 1988 can be found here.

Normann Witzleb, Associate Professor in Law, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How political parties legally harvest your data and use it to bombard you with election spam

Posted on November 1, 2020 by particularkev

Erica Mealy, University of the Sunshine Coast

On Monday October 26, five days ahead of Queensland’s election, many voters received an unsolicited text message from Clive Palmer’s mining company Mineralogy, accusing Labor of planning to introduce a “death tax” and providing a link to an online how-to-vote card for Palmer’s United Australia Party.

Screenshot of campaign text message — Screenshot of a text message sent by Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy.
Author provided

Many recipients angrily wondered how Palmer’s firm had got hold of their contact details, and why they were receiving information that had already been thoroughly debunked.

It’s not clear how many voters received the message, although Deputy Premier Steven Miles accused Palmer of sending it to “hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders”. The message was also sent to many permanent and interstate residents not eligible to vote in the election.

Screenshot of election text message. — Not all of the recipients of this message were in the relevant electorate.
Author provided

But the issue goes deeper than Palmer’s dubious tactics, although his message was a particularly egregious example. This and similar messages have been sent to voters outside the relevant electorate. For example, one message from an independent candidate for the electorate of Macalister was received by a resident of Stafford.

In fact, there’s no law to prevent registered political parties — and the contractors and volunteers who work on their behalf — collecting your contact details and bombarding you with messages, regardless of whether you consented or not.

The problem of spam text messages was also prevalent during the 2019 federal election, when the tactics of Palmer’s United Australia Party in particular were called into question, prompting the party to pledge to stop the practice.

Political candidates, including independents and members of registered political parties, can request access to the Australian Electoral Commission’s database of voters’ contact details, to use in their campaign messaging. And it doesn’t stop there: they can also buy access to voters’ data from “information aggregator” companies such as Sensis, including voters’ names, home addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Information aggregators also collect and analyse your publicly available data. Your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tiktok or Instagram posts can easily be scraped. If your phone number or email address appears publicly, such as on an advert for a community event or public comment on a town planning submission, it can be collected. Few people realise how large their digital footprint really is.

This can reveal not only your contact details but also your political views. Publicly share a post about environmental concerns or social justice issues and you may have just pigeonholed yourself as a left-leaning voter, potentially putting you in line for targeted campaign messages.

Australia has laws against unsolicited spam, so how do political parties get away with this? Because they are entirely exempt from anti-spam legislation.

How politicians dodge spam laws

Private businesses have to abide by strict federal laws about data privacy and spam. The Privacy Act 1998 and the Spam Act 2003 were enacted to protect the public from unwanted and harmful information sharing.

The Privacy act regulates who may have access to your personal information, how it must be stored and what must happen should that data be compromised. For example, if your data is hacked you must be notified.

As summarised by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Spam is unwanted marketing messages sent via email, text or instant messaging containing offers, advertisements or promotions. Permission to contact you by these means can be part of the terms and conditions of sale or use of a product, through a specific check box or if you make your e-mail or phone number public. Specific exemptions are made in the Spam Act for registered charities, government organisations, educational institutions and registered political parties.

Of course, in an open democracy it makes sense to allow elected officials to communicate directly with the voting public, particularly at election time. But aside from the nuisance and (legal) invasion of privacy, there are two main problems with the current free-for-all.

Problem 1: data security

If a data breach occurs for a non-exempt organisation, such as a bank or government organisation, any person who could be harmed from having information shared must be notified. The types of harm include the potential for identity theft and fraud.

But political parties, being exempt from privacy laws, are also exempt from this responsibility. This means if a political party has a data breach and shares your contact details, it doesn’t have to tell you.

Political parties reportedly maintain detailed databases of their constituents. These databases contain not just personal information held by the electoral commission, but any interactions with elected members, including complaints and contacts with electorate offices.

Problem 2: misinformation

Palmer’s text messages were a blanket salvo rather than tailored to particular voters. Hundreds of voters, and many non-voters, received the same message, despite repeated explicit denials from Labor it’s considering introducing a “death tax”.

In Australia, with an arguably free press and available fact-checking, the public can seek balanced, factual information if they are motivated to do so. But in the internet age, many people are vulnerable to “fake news”, whether through naivete or because of “confirmation bias” — the increased likelihood of believing information that fits with their pre-existing worldview.

What can you do about it?

Screenshot of election campaign message — Clive Palmer’s follow-up message sent on October 29.
Author provided

Until the law changes, there are limited ways to combat political text and email intrusion. The first is judicious use of the block and delete buttons and e-mail spam filters. While not foolproof, this does reduce the potential for receiving messages again from that same number or email. However, this tactic would not have helped avoid a second round of messages sent by Palmer on October 29 from a different number.

The second way to combat these messages is to prevent your data and opinions from reaching political databases. In Australia, there is currently no reliable service to help remove your data from the public view, so the best option is to keep it from getting out in the first place.

To do this, you must always read the terms and conditions before giving away personal data. If you have time, audit your entire public online presence to find all the places on the internet that store your personal data, including on all social media platforms and on personal, professional or community web pages. You must always remain vigilant about protecting your information, which is no simple task.

Erica Mealy, Lecturer in Computer Science, University of the Sunshine Coast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sharing my thoughts with the world from a Particular Baptist perspective

Multiple surveillance tools are being used

The proposed principles don’t go far enough

A proposal for detailed and consistent laws

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How does Sputnik V work?

How well does Sputnik V work against COVID-19?

What are the unanswered questions about Sputnik V?

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Misleading conduct and privacy settings

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Only some consumers?

Google’s choice architecture

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How did Google mislead consumers about their location history?

ACCC has misleading privacy policies in its sights

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Previous problems

A need for accessible information

What protections are in place?

Gaps in our knowledge

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The recommendation

Why did STIKO make this recommendation?

What do we know about the vaccine?

What do we know from other vaccines?

Limiting access limits options for older people

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Data from 45 nations

Effects on GDP per capita

Exports and imports

Consumer spending

National wealth

It’s not a zero-sum game

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Deeper insights

It’s not a competition

What’s next?

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Australians care deeply about data privacy

Issues of concern for the new privacy review

Exemptions for small business and political parties should be reviewed

Trust drives innovation

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How politicians dodge spam laws

Problem 1: data security

Problem 2: misinformation

What can you do about it?

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