Team became aware of police ability to use TraceTogether data in late October: Vivian

Janice Heng

Published Tue, Feb 2, 2021 · 06:08 PM

IT WAS in late October that Minister-in-Charge of the Smart Nation Initiative Vivian Balakrishnan became aware of the possibility that the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) could apply to TraceTogether data, he told Parliament on Tuesday, in reply to a question from Workers' Party MP and Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh.

This was after he had announced in June that TraceTogether data would be used only for contact tracing - "simply because this was how and why we designed TraceTogether", he said. "The potential use of the data by the police did not cross my mind or the mind of my engineers at all.

"But what I said in June was wrong," he added. At the end of October, a member of the public asked Dr Balakrishnan if he was sure that the CPC - the prevailing law which empowers the police to obtain any data under Singapore's jurisdiction for criminal investigations - does not apply to TraceTogether data.

Dr Balakrishnan said he asked his staff to double-check the legal provisions. "At that point, I was informed that the CPC applied," he said. He was also then informed that in fact the police had requested TraceTogether data on one previous occasion, in relation to a murder case.

"I had many sleepless nights and I engaged in several rounds of discussion with some of my senior Cabinet colleagues on whether we should carve out - and if we did, how should we carve out - the contact-tracing data from the application of the CPC."

In early December, "about a month" after Dr Balakrishnan had started this process of internal discussions, Member of Parliament Christopher de Souza filed a Parliamentary question on the issue, which was answered in the January sitting of Parliament.