Clive Palmer's mobile app could track voter data and there's no law to stop it

[Mighty AU]

It's gimmicky, crude and more than a little transparent in its intent, but Clive Palmer's mobile app has also unwittingly exposed a blind spot in Australian politics. 

The brash political outsider's attention-seeking app The Humble Meme Merchant is presented as a satirical takedown of his political rivals, but embedded within it is the potential to track and harvest valuable voter information.

Tom West is the brains behind Clive Palmer's recently released campaign gaming app, which he said has been downloaded more than 30,000 times since its launch two weeks ago.

"It's been an incredibly exciting few weeks since it came out," Mr West said from Bali, where he is on holidays after a busy few months getting the app ready for release.

Now an "oversight" in how the game was developed looks set to again draw attention to Mr Palmer's regard for voters' privacy, following his party's mass text messaging campaign over the past month.

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-29/clive-palmers-politcal-app-could-track-your-voter-data/10731324

[SleepyAl]

Mr West, who has never developed an app before, said the features were not switched on and insisted the game was not designed to harvest users' personal data.
"This app does not track anything whatsoever," he said."The  best way that people can actually go and check that on their Android device is to go into the settings, and app permissions, and they can see that the app has not requested access to anything."To actually access that information, we have to ask the user — which we don't."
Since being contacted by the ABC, Mr West has begun working on an updated version — with the location tracking and identity access permissions removed."
I've actually already removed it from the code base, but I didn't want to remove them before this interview because it would seem a bit disingenuous if they suddenly disappeared before we discussed them," he said."
That privacy policy is a stock standard one, straight from the internet. The main reason we have it in there is too keep Google and Apple happy," he said."
The full extent of the information that we collect is download figures, active users … I can see where users are downloading it on a country level. So the information we collect is incredibly limited."
But even if the location tracking function was activated on Mr Palmer's game, it is unlikely the United Australia Party would be in breach of any privacy or electoral rules.
David Vaile, chair of the Privacy Foundation, said political parties are exempt from the Privacy Act, which gives citizens control over how their personal information is collected, how it is used and whom it is shared with.

So basically, the app isn't tracking anything, but if it was they'd be legally in the clear, which is shitty.