Australia is refusing to use what could be one of the most powerful weapons in the fight against coronavirus.

Key points: Some countries are tracing their citizens movements to map the spread of coronavirus.

Some countries are tracing their citizens movements to map the spread of coronavirus. Australia is using traditional tracing methods, despite it being legal to access citizens' mobile data.

Australia is using traditional tracing methods, despite it being legal to access citizens' mobile data. Not all experts agree mobile data should be shared.

Many countries are using surveillance data to track down and warn individuals who have had close contact with an infected person.

So why isn't Australia taking advantage of technology?

'Enormous' workloads

State and territory contact tracing departments are relying mainly on questionnaires.

Once someone is diagnosed with an infectious disease, tracers race to find every person they interacted with over the previous 14 days.

These close contacts are then notified and told to self-isolate.

"The workload is enormous," Bret Hart from Curtin University said.

He said with the huge workload it makes sense to "explore new technologies to assist their daunting task".

Inspiration from abroad

The Federal Government and some states, including NSW, are using aggregated, anonymised mobile data from telecommunications companies to monitor the public's movements.

But none are using an individual's mobile data for contact tracing.

China, South Korea, Hong Kong and Israel are making infected people download a smartphone app to reveal their movements and contacts.

Professor Hart said he backed the introduction of similar technology here.

"Any device to make the contact tracer's job easier is not only good for them but also for the community if it helps stop the spread."

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Governments can access your data

Patrick Fair from Deakin University, who specialises in law and IT, said the Australian government can legally access citizens' mobile data.

Under the Telecommunications Act 1997, governments are allowed to request access to data for many reasons, including national security.

"The threshold in the act is quite low and by making the human disease emergency declaration under the Biosecurity Act 2015, the government has easily given itself power to get access to that information," Professor Fair said.

In statements provided to the ABC state and territory health departments said they did not use mobile data to contact trace for privacy reasons.

But Professor Fair advocated for governments to take contact tracing to the next level.

"The economic impact of the shutdown is of such a magnitude that not using the most intelligent and information-based systems to combat the virus seems, to me, to be an indefensible position."

But infectious diseases expert Trent Yarwood from James Cook University disagreed.

"Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should," Dr Yarwood said.