One of my great concerns in the pandemic has been the potential for Government to seize emergency powers to “protect” us, and then never let those powers go when the emergency is over.

While the NSW Government has been pretty sensible in its approach, just as we are getting to the end of the worst of the pandemic, they are trying to soften us up for more loss of liberty.

Today, Premier Gladys Berejiklian was again talking about the use of QR codes to track who goes into which business venue at various times. Business people can use the Service NSW site to generate their unique QR code which they print and put near the entry to the business. Customers then use the app to scan the code and everything is good.

It’s a great solution for contact tracing, except for one fatal flaw. The information that you were at the Good Coffee Cafe is instantly sent to the NSW Government and held for four weeks in case they need to use it for contact tracing.

They guarantee that your information is used only for this purpose and that their database is secure.

I am somewhat sceptical about those claims. Government databases are always being attacked by people looking for data. But people who work for the Government can always find great reasons for using these great data resources for other purposes. Imagine some diamond rings are stolen from the “Glittery Things Jewelers”. How long will it be before the police think that information might be useful “to eliminate people from their enquiries”?

So I went to the NSW Premier’s contact page today to express my concerns about this. After filling out the form I found this little disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

By submitting this meeting/ event request, I/ my organisation and its representatives consent that Department of Premier and Cabinet do not take responsibility for the security of any commercially or otherwise sensitive content.

So all those claims about “You can trust us we are the Government” just don’t mean a thing.

That is why if you go to any business with a Service NSW QR code you should say, “No thanks. I will register with pen and paper.”