I am perfectly willing to change my opinion if given more information, but until then...
At every single point in the past where they have had the chance to deal with technology they have done one or more of the following: 1. Screwed up, and then tried to cover it up. 2. Outright lied. 3. Created malicious laws that mandate violating privacy and makes it illegal to tell the truth about it.
Basically they have proven numerous times that they can’t be trusted with technology or privacy.
Getting it right this time means the Government doesn't have any excuses going forward.
Overall Australia is genuinely doing a great job in relation to COVID, mainly because the Government had the good sense to put the experts center stage and give them real authority. Most Australians have spotted this break with the past and have unified to contain COVID. Going forward, maybe the nation can keep sanity in government and avoid the political parties again taking over the asylum?
It has certainly changed my opinion of them. I used to think that they were out of touch and incompetent, but now I think they can be competent and highly effective when they care, I just don’t think they care about privacy one bit.
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...
This tech can and should be using crypto random hashes rather than phone numbers. The authorities don't need to call anyone, let the app and the fully anonymous central db do it's job to notify others that they need to get tested.
That may be so for an ideal democracy but with our far-from-perfect ones where the power imbalance inevitably favors the incumbents, precious little ever changes.
But forgetting this is a tactic of divide and rule. My team vs your team. I can tell you as someone that is pretty vocal about my distaste for parties that I am still frequently lumped into the opposing team of whoever I'm talking to as soon as I disagree.
Critique is a keystone to democracy, but it isn't the only one. Unity is as well. But unity doesn't mean we have to agree. Unity means that we recognize that we're on the same team and trying to make our country better, even if we disagree with the methods. It is recognizing that we can't hold all the answers, we're human after all, and that to get closer to the objective reality we need to consider many positions. But that's divide and rule's bread and butter.
I actually believe this is helpful. Just in any democratic setting you want different types of players. You want the "burn the system down" people, because they provide harsh critiques and don't hold back. You want the "okay, but I have reservations" people, because they will push forward but also consider what they are doing (and will likely whistleblow if things get out of hand). You want the loyalists because they will push forward despite criticism. The trick is that you need a balance of these people (and the unmentioned players).
Specifically here I don't think we've even answered the question of "should we have contact tracing apps?" Because of this, I do think having that angry mob is helpful. They loyalists will push forward building it but the mob will help us decide if we even want that technology in our society. If we decide we do, we'll have it. If we decide we don't, well we'll know better how they would be designed.
__Being critical of those in power is a keystone to democracy.__