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On Monday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced the launch of a mobile phone contact tracking app that is at the center of the government’s strategy to ease the blockage of the coronavirus.
It is being tested on the Isle of Wight before it is available nationwide at the end of the month.
Using the Bluetooth capabilities on smartphones, the NHS Covid-19 Tracing app will keep records of who a person meets with. If a user or contact declares they have become ill (no testing is required), they will send notifications to everyone on that list to advise them to isolate themselves.
But the announcement of its launch immediately raised a series of questions about the technology, its security, and whether the public would use it.
Why did the UK choose this type of application?
There are two possible ways that a contact tracking phone application could work. One is a “decentralized” model where all relevant contact information is stored only on users’ phones.
The alternative approach, the “centralized” model, is where the NHS maintains some data in a single database.
Apple and Google have tried to promote a decentralized model, arguing that it is best for privacy, and have worked together to develop a set of interfaces that support a contact tracking application on that basis.
But the NHS team that developed the official tracking app rejected that approach and instead insisted on maintaining a central database of those who say they have been infected.
But this has raised privacy concerns.
Ian Levy, technical director of the National Center for Cyber Security (NCSC), wrote Monday that the NHS would only keep anonymous data. Each user of the application is assigned a unique number (the actual number changes daily) and the data about the people they met will only be loaded after they have reported that they feel sick.
This, Levy said, would allow the NHS “to better understand how the disease appears to spread” and to have some “contact charts to carry out an analysis”, although such exercises would be limited since the only data the application requests is The First part of a person’s zip code.
Is the NHS app secure?
It has developed at breakneck speed in the past two months, and although NHSX and the company that developed it, VMware Pivotal, have received advice from government security experts at the NCSC, there is a possibility that there may be flaws. security.
Levy, however, argued that they were minimal. He said the core system only stored a set of numbers and if he found out that “my app ID is 123456, there are some theoretical things you can do to try to understand my contacts if you have followed me. But if you have followed me, you probably have seen my contacts anyway. “
Others have expressed concern that the central database may expand and increase security risk. Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX, wrote last month: “In future versions of the app, people may choose to provide the NHS with additional information about themselves to help us identify critical points and trends.”
That led to Damian Collins MP, former chairman of the culture, media and sport selection committee, wonder if that would facilitate the identification of people in the database if they were hacked. He also asked if the centralized database should be removed at the end of the pandemic, as Australia has promised to do.
Will the public cooperate and download it?
This is unclear and is part of the purpose of the Isle of Wight trial to see if the public is willing to use it. A similar app that encourages people to self-report coronavirus symptoms, developed by King’s College London, has more than 2.4 million users. But that represents roughly 3.5% of the UK population.
The Big Data Institute at Oxford University has estimated that if 60% of the population were to adopt the NHS application, then it could help “substantially reduce” the number of new cases of coronavirus along with other relevant measures to control the disease, and help the UK out of the blockade relatively safely.
Few, however, believe that the NHS app will prove to be as popular at first. Those who have helped develop it at NHSX privately admit that the speed at which they have had to work has made it difficult to sell the need for the app to the public and adequately reassure citizens about their privacy and security.
On Monday, Gould told parliamentarians: “Even if the absorption rate is 20%, that gives us important information on how the virus is spreading.” That may be more realistic, although that means adoption would be more or less in line with Singapore, a country with markedly higher respect for the state.
Can it be enforced?
There are no plans to enforce collection at this time. It is also unclear what the immediate incentive is. People living on the Isle of Wight will not see an early reduction in the national blockade, so their reason for getting involved would be a desire to test the app on behalf of the rest of the country.
Ultimately, however, effective monitoring, testing and tracing of the coronavirus will be at the core of a set of strategies to facilitate the blockade, and those involved in its development are already appealing to the British sense of civic duty.
As Gould has put it: “If you want to keep yourself and your family safe, if you want to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed and at the same time want the country to come back and the economy to move, the app will be an essential part of that strategy. “
There is another problem: what happens if the app tells someone that they need to isolate themselves and they don’t? Until now, there has been no discussion on how to convince people to comply with the warning.
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