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When Apple and Google publicly announced that they would partner to implement contact tracking technology Intended to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, the duo went to great lengths to promise that the program would put user privacy front and center. It is a claim that has left more than a few investigators and reporters. skeptical, to say the least, and also, according to reports, one that annoys at least one political power.
The Guardian reports that there is currently a tense confrontation between the UK National Health Service and the two Tech giants in question. The main conflict, as one source explained, is that the contact tracking application currently under development UK authorities rely on monitoring to be done centrally, routing all data for each downloaded app through a single government server. It is a concept that not only goes against preserve privacy The ethos that both companies insisted was built into the app, but also one that can get out of hand quickly if it gets into the wrong hands.
By the guardian:
That means that if the NHS Pursuing its original plans, its application would face severe limitations in its operation.
The app would not work if the phone screen was turned off or an app other than the contact tracker was being used at the same time. It would require the screen to be active all the time, quickly draining battery life, and would leave users’ personal data at risk if their phone is lost or stolen while the app is in use.
While the minutiae centralization may sound fussy, exist some good reasons why both companies integrated decentralization into this tracking technology from the get-go. By transmitting data from the phone of an application downloader through a network of international servers, such as companies I promised to do so, they make it much more difficult for that application to be used for surveillance. While the tracking technology employed by, say, a adtech company could tell feds a person’s information precise location or the general population with whom they have been in contact, decentralization prevents each person’s data from being linked to others, or used to create a massive government-run database.
To be fair, the UK authorities have plenty of llegitimate reasons advocate for this data to be centralized. Keeping the data centralized makes it easier to see how certain stocks move over time, which could help them track the long-term impact of the virus even when it finally passes. And, perhaps just as important, it is also frankly cheaperand easier to run overall. But that same centralized system could easily be used to build the massive citizen-tracking infrastructure that UK authorities have been constantly arming over the past decade.
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When The Guardian contacted NHSX, the NHS branch behind UK’s next app: A spokesperson denied the agency was in a territorial battle with two of the planet’s largest technology companies, saying “everyone agrees that user privacy is paramount” and that a backend decentralized is “complementary“To the program they had in mind. But to be honest, after looking at Parliament recorded audio about privacy so far, it’s hard not to be a little skeptical.
