The Western Australia (WA) Government has worked quickly to shackle police after it was unveiled the department had legally gained access to user location data through the state’s COVID-19 tracing app, Safeway. New legislation was introduced on June 15 to ban WA police from accessing SafeWA data after it had used personal information for two separate murder investigations—despite promises the app would only be used for contact tracing purposes. Compulsory contact tracing was mandated following the launch of the Safeway app in November 2020 and has since garnered around 250 million total scans and close to 2 million total user registrants—equivalent to three-quarters of WA’s population. WA Premier Mark McGowan said his requests for police to halt operations were ignored after he was initially made aware of the app’s unintended use earlier in the year. “I became aware in April this year that police had used the app on two …