THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) – The European Commission has released a set of guidelines for coronavirus tracking apps in the European Union but privacy watchdogs are still skeptical.
For some EU countries that have been under lockdown for months, the peak of new Covid-19 infections has passed and governments are now searching for the best ways to reopen their economies.
“Contact tracing apps to limit the spread of coronavirus can be useful, especially as part of member states' exit strategies. However, strong privacy safeguards are a prerequisite for the uptake of these apps, and therefore their usefulness,” said Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton in a statement about the toolbox.
Contact tracing, the public health term for identifying anyone who might have come into contact with a sick person and their subsequent contacts, has been used for decades. It helped eradicate smallpox and located a main carrier of typhoid fever and has been used to control more recent outbreaks of HIV and SARS.
But contact tracing is labor-intensive. During the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, contact tracers interviewed infected persons and their families, went to schools and workplaces and in some communities had to go door-to-door to question potential contacts. It’s also imperfect, as people do not always remember who they have had contact with or might intentionally lie about their whereabouts.
Some governments see smartphone apps as a cheaper and more effective alternative to the traditional method.
Nearly 100,000 people have died in the EU since the Covid-19 outbreak started in February. Italy has been the worst hit, with some 20,000 dead, but deaths have been recorded in every country in the 27-member state political and economic union.
The EU guidelines released Thursday recommend that apps rely on Bluetooth proximity technology, rather than GPS location data, to anonymously map contacts between infected people and others. The European Commission also said the apps should be discontinued once the crisis is over.
But digital privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation has questioned the approach.
“Government has not shown that some intrusive technologies would work, such as phone location surveillance, which is insufficiently granular to identify when two people were close enough together to transmit the virus,” the group said in a statement.
Virus tracking apps are already in use in some countries. Visitors to malls, public transit, and office buildings in China, the source of the coronavirus outbreak, must have QR codes on their phones scanned before they are allowed inside. In South Korea, the government is requiring people who have been caught defying quarantine by leaving their phones at home to wear wristbands to track their location. The government there publishes the movements of anyone diagnosed with Covid-19 on a central website.
In Europe, however, governments must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, a 2016 EU law that governs the collection, processing and sharing of personal data.
Meanwhile, Apple and Google have teamed up to create another contact tracing tool. Their system isn’t an app but is built directly into a smartphone’s operating system. It transmits an anonymous ID over a short distance and if your phone comes into contact with the phone of someone who has tested positive, you will get a notification along with information about testing.
Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge proposed two apps for the Netherlands, one for contact tracing and one to report symptoms, during a press conference last week. In response, a group of privacy experts sent a letter to the government questioning the use of such technology.
“The use of tracking, tracing and health apps is very far-reaching. It is therefore important to take a critical look at the usefulness, necessity, and effectiveness of such apps, as well as the social and legal impact," the letter said.
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