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Hundreds of academics around the world have welcomed efforts to introduce privacy-friendly contact tracking systems to help understand the spread of the coronavirus.
A letter, signed by about 300 academics and published Monday, praised recent announcements by Apple and Google to build an optional, decentralized way to let people know if they’ve come into contact with someone confirmed to be infected with COVID-19. .
Scholars said contact tracking apps that use Bluetooth automatic tracking are much more privacy-preserving than apps that collect location data at a central store.
“Tracking contacts is a well-understood tool to combat epidemics, and has traditionally been done manually. In some situations, so-called ‘contact tracking applications’ on people’s smartphones can improve the effectiveness of the technique of manual contact tracking, “the letter says. read. “Although the effectiveness of contact tracking applications is controversial, we must ensure that those implemented preserve the privacy of their users, thus protecting against many other problems, and pointing out that such applications can be reused to allow unwarranted discrimination and surveillance “
Academic support could not come at a more critical time. There are competitive methods to track people’s contact with the coronavirus. Decentralized systems are much more privacy conscious because no single entity stores the tracking data. But academics say centralized data warehouses can “allow the reconstruction of invasive population information to be rejected without further discussion,” and instead called on all countries to “trust systems that are subject to public scrutiny. and they preserve privacy by design. ” “
“It is vital that, as we emerge from the current crisis, we do not create a tool that enables large-scale data collection on the population, either now or later,” the letter says.
neither open nor transparent enoughand lent their support to decentralized systems, such as the privacy-friendly DP-3T protocol, or systems such as the cross-platform solution from Apple and Google. “data-reactid =” 18 “> The letter comes just a few days after some of the same academics gained their support for a similar contact-tracking project, known as PEPP-PT, which is said to have seven unidentified governments enrolled So far, two of them, Spain and Switzerland, have called for a decentralized contact tracking solution.After PEPP-PT released details of its centralized proprietary protocol, several academics associated with the project rejected it, saying it was neither open nor transparent enoughand lent their support to decentralized systems, such as the privacy-friendly DP-3T protocol, or systems such as the cross-platform solution from Apple and Google.
Alan Woodward, a professor at the University of Surrey who also signed the letter, told TechCrunch that the letter serves as what the academic community believes to be the “right approach” to contact tracking.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in this field before,” Woodward said. “It shows that there are not just a few who share the concern. I really hope that governments will listen before doing something that will be very difficult to undo.”
What is contact tracking?
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