Part 3 in a series Dedicated Data privacy and COVID-19 posts and articles
Part 2 -Apps providing COVID-19 diagnosis from your voice - Privacy and ethical concerns. - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/privacy-ethics-covid-19-chun-wong/
Part 1 - Various approaches to Testing Tracing Tracking (TTT) of COVID-19 at the national level - https://lnkd.in/eZt_VRW
UK's health secretary Matt Hancock announced the move at the government's daily pandemic press briefing. He said the NHS was "working closely with the world's leading tech companies" on the initiative.
It's likely to be similar to efforts created by Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Apple and Google have also collaborated to produce an app to bring together their collective resources on big data analysis, collection, app design and deployment.
Contact tracing aim is to identify and alert people who have come into close proximity to someone who proves to be suffering from COVID-19.
Mr Hancock also said "If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus, you can securely tell this new NHS app," he explained.
"And the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you've been in significant contact with over the past few days, even before you had symptoms, so that they know and can act accordingly.
"All data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research.
"And we won't hold it any longer than is needed."
There are provisos to the efficacy to contact tracing, chiefly being :
- People will need to have a recent compatible device, primarily Android and Apple iPhones.
- Majority of people will need to be regularly tested;
- Bluetooth can extend up to 20m, so is likely to produce false positives and negatively impact on it's accuracy based on exposure time;
- Some people may report themselves as "positive" when they're not.
Unwinding quarantine or lockdown
More than 1.7billion people are restricted in movement around the world, about 20% of the global population. Contact tracing will be one tool (combined with testing) that is likely to figure in most nation's solutions, as inevitably, as restrictions are removed, the infections are likely to flare up.
Civil liberties - Data Privacy
There is the scope for this data to be misused, either by big corporations or some governments. Without resorting to conspiracy theories, where there are more than many on the internet!
It is a valid threat, even in democracies, there have been emergency laws put in place which bypasses the normal checks and balances.
History tells us that these temporary controls are very quick to be erected and slow to be removed.
The further reading section below explores the subject in greater detail and depth.
Further reading
Apple & Google partner on COVID-19
When Tracking the Virus Means Tracking Your Citizens
Use of subscriber data to tackle COVID-19 lets the civil liberties genie out of the bottle
Personal commentary. Views are the author’s own.