Singapore to pass laws on contact-trace data use for law enforcement

TraceTogether is being used by 78% of Singapore’s 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 ‘can obtain any data, including TraceTogether data, for criminal investigations’. — AFP

Singapore’s government plans to create urgent legislation to formalise 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 offences, it said.