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Law360 (May 6, 2020, 8:26 PM EDT) -- Australia's attorney general is floating a draft bill that lays out punishments for misuse of data collected through the country's COVID-19 contact tracing app that has been downloaded more than 5 million times since it was released April 26.
Serious offenses related to the COVIDSafe app include collection, disclosure or use of data outside public health authorities' contact tracing purposes and uploading the information without an app user's consent, according to the proposed bill that's meant to support the app and provide ongoing protections.
Violators could face up to five years in prison, thousands of dollars in fines or both, according to the draft legislation, which is expected to be introduced in the Australian Parliament next week.
The voluntary app is part of the government's efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. It uses Bluetooth data to help find close contacts of people who've tested positive for COVID-19 and alerts those who may have been exposed to the virus, according to the Australian government's Department of Health.
Users will be prompted to delete the app from their phones at the end of the pandemic and information collected from it will also be destroyed at that point, the country's health agency said.
Other protections outlined in the bill include designating the country's privacy regulator to oversee COVIDSafe, requiring the administrator of the app's data store to delete users' registration data upon request, and not collecting data from users who've chosen to delete the app. It also calls for a process to delete COVIDSafe data at the end of the pandemic.
Australia has reported 97 coronavirus-related deaths overall, a stark contrast to the more than 70,000 reported in the United States.
U.S. lawmakers have been fielding and calling attention to privacy concerns as companies like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. tout systems that can track COVID-19 contacts.
Four U.S. Senate Republicans said last week they plan to introduce legislation that would hold companies liable for misusing consumers' health, geolocation and other personal information. Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge slammed the proposal, saying it lacked enforcement teeth.
Federal Trade Commissioner Christine S. Wilson has also pushed Congress to establish baseline federal privacy rules that would set a uniform standard for how companies can generally collect, use and share personal information.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has pressed artificial intelligence company Clearview AI, which has reportedly offered its facial recognition software as a "contact tracing" tool, to verify that its technology works and does not pose an undue threat to U.S. citizens' privacy.
--Additional reporting by Allison Grande and Nadia Dreid. Editing by Janice Carter Brown.
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