Singapore鈥檚 government plans to create urgent legislation to formalize the use of virus contact-tracing data in investigations of serious crimes.
Legislation will be introduced in the next sitting of parliament in February to limit the use of the data to probes of seven categories of serious crimes, the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office said in a statement Friday. Those will include murder, terrorism, kidnapping, and serious sexual offenses, it said.
The move comes amid concerns over privacy issues in the city-state鈥檚 TraceTogether contact-tracing program designed to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.
鈥淲e acknowledge our error in not stating that data from TraceTogether is not exempt from the Criminal Procedure Code,鈥 the office said.
TraceTogether is being used by 78% of Singapore鈥檚 population. According to its website, the program does not collect data about individual GPS locations, Wifi, or mobile networks being used. But a clause about data being only used to contact trace people exposed to the coronavirus was removed and replaced with a statement noting that police 鈥渃an obtain any data, including TraceTogether data, for criminal investigations.鈥
鈥淭he government was unequivocal last year that the data would only be used for contact tracing and public health,鈥 said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. It should 鈥渞eturn to the original purpose of TraceTogether by firewalling that program鈥檚 data from police, prosecutors, and the criminal justice system,鈥 he said.
Gerald Giam, a lawmaker for the opposition Workers鈥 Party, posted this week on Facebook that it鈥檚 鈥渋ll-advised鈥 that the government hasn鈥檛 ruled out the use of TraceTogether data for criminal investigations.
鈥淚t is not in the public interest to completely deny the Police access to such data, when the safety of the public or the proper conduct of justice is at stake,鈥 the office said in the statement. The country has already used it to investigate a murder case. 鈥 Ann Koh/Bloomberg
