Lee Melissa; Mooney JosephMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Madam Chair and my apologies to my colleague Joseph Mooney who obviously had more to actually ask on that particular issue. But I go back to the search warrant issue where the Minister has answered by saying that this is a part of the ability for the Government department to actually do a search warrant and this is apparently the modernisation. So I asked the Minister if he could actually answer when was the last time a search warrant was executed to collect data and what did that data get used for in the usefulness for the Government Statistician. I think it is really important to find out what circumstances warrant executing a search warrant on an individual's business or premises when it is for statistical or research purposes. I just don't understand why something which we normally associate for criminal offences—for example to activate a search warrant—is needed to get statistics data. I'd like to get an answer on when was the last time it was actually activated and what useful data they collected and what that data was used for by the Government.JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to quickly direct the Minister's attention also to clause 80 which says that A person who is authorised under section 48 to access data research commits an offence if the person—(a) knowingly contravenes section 54(1)(a) or (b)" and clause 54(1)(a) or (b) for those watching is accessing and using the data only for the research for which access is authorised and complying with any conditions imposed by the Statistician. So that on the face of it as a good protective measure. What I'm interested for the Minister's thoughts on is clause 80(1)(b)(ii) and that's if they knowingly publish or disclose data "being reckless as to whether the reasonable steps required by section 54(1)(c) have been taken." Clause 54(1)(c) for clarity is that they must "take all reasonable steps to ensure that they do not publish or otherwise disclose data in a form that could be reasonably expected to identify any individual or organisation;". This is an interesting point and I'm interested in the Minister's thoughts on how this will play out in an era of constantly increasing computational power. When the Statistics Act 1975 was passed about 6 million transistors could fit on a microprocessor. Today it's around 114 billion. Stuart Smith: Say that again?JOSEPH MOONEY: When the Statistics Act 1975 was passed about 6 million transistors could fit on a microprocessor. Today it's around 114 billion—so 6 million to 114 billion. This computing power can then be increased further through networking computers and it's increasing exponentially. There's another point here that's relevant. I asked the Minister this earlier but didn't yet receive a response to this specific point. The specific point is about how this bill appears to be focused on de-identification rather than anonymisation and de-identification has a lower standard than anonymisation. So as an example as more facts are included in the public record—for example date of birth broad location genders—this combined with other facts makes it increasingly easy to narrow candidates to a single person or a small group and the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties has provided a couple of examples. It's been shown in research by the former US Federal Trade Commission's chief technology officer for example that 87 percent of the US population can be uniquely re-identified based on a five-digit Zip code gender and date of birth. New Zealand census meshblocks typically used in research here are smaller and make re-identification even simpler. Even using meshblock data on religion to identify which streets have higher presences of particular groups such as particular religious groups could be not a good thing in the wrong hands and second data sets can be combined with existing public data sometimes in unexpected ways. For example in 2019 the Australian state of Victoria released an anonymised set of data from myki public transport cards. Researchers were able to use a tweet made by a Victorian MP about catching a train to obtain his entire travel history. Similar approaches have been used to de-anonymise medical records in the Australian medical system and locate US service personnel and base locations. So it's reasonable to assume that efforts to unravel de-identification of New Zealand's personal data will only increase will only increase and become easier over time. So in terms of this definition in clause 80(1)(b)(ii) about being reckless as to whether reasonable steps to ensure that they only publish or disclose data in a form that can be reasonably expected to identify any individual or organisation how does the Minister see this playing out in an era where the computational power is in increasing exponentially and the different datasets are becoming increasingly available and can be linked to these datasets that have been collected for specific purposes under this bill?"