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It has taken a different approach than other European countries by processing data centrally rather than solely on the devices themselves, where a higher level of privacy can be guaranteed.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Monday, however, that privacy and data security were critical to the app’s development.
Everyone on the island off the southern coast of England, which has a population of around 140,000, will be able to download the app starting Thursday, while the health service and council staff will have access starting Tuesday.
Anyone having COVID-19 symptoms or a positive test, enter their details into the app to begin the tracking process.
“By downloading the app, you are protecting your own health, you are protecting the health of your loved ones and the health of your community,” Hancock said at a press conference on Monday.
“The pilot is important so that we can help ensure that the app works as well as possible in conjunction with the contact tracking system.”
Countries are rushing to develop applications that, along with a broader testing and monitoring program, are seen as key to facilitating the social distancing rules that have closed global economies.
Britain has opted for a centralized model, whereby a list of contacts made via bluetooth signals are stored on users’ devices as anonymous tokens.
If the user says that they have symptoms or have tested positive, the contact list can be sent to the application, which analyzes the data and notifies the devices that they match the tokens it considers to be at risk, for example, for the time that the devices were nearby.
Matthew Gould, Executive Director of the NHSX technology group for the National Health Service that developed the application, said they had “put privacy at the center of it.”
“He doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t know who you’ve been around. He doesn’t know where you are,” he said.
PRIVACY TRADE
Rival systems, including one proposed by Apple and Google, match token lists on the devices themselves, eliminating the risk of sending data to a centralized server, even if it is anonymous.
Britain’s Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said Monday that if she started with a blank sheet for an application, she would decentralize it.
But he told a committee of lawmakers that it did not mean that a centralized system could not have the same type of privacy and security protection.
Gould said centralized technology could give more information about the virus.
“If privacy was the only thing we were optimizing for here, then it may be that a decentralized approach is the default option,” he said.
But privacy had to be balanced with public health, and a centralized approach offered the potential to “collect some very important data that provides a serious view of the virus that will help us.”
These included data on what symptoms developed in COVID-19, which contacts were most risky, and the difference, for example, between a contact three days ago and one yesterday.
He added that Britain was talking to international partners and was also working “phenomenally closely” with Apple and Google.
Ideally, more than half the population would download the app, he said, but even more than 20% would give some important insights into how the virus was spreading.
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