Coronavirus tracking apps may be the way out of lockdown, but at what cost to our freedom?
Lockdown is a game-changer in terms of civil liberties – and post-Covid the role between citizen and the state here in the west will never be the same again, warns Oliver Bennett
Week five. And as we reach the kind of domestic stagnation that gnaws at the soul, everyone’s keen to look at life beyond the lockdown – including Keir Starmer, the new Labour leader, who has made it a keynote initiative to ask for government clarity about the likely dates of release. But when – and how? A key way that is increasingly mooted is through the use of technology and Covid-19 tracking apps, which allows us to see where people are likely to be infected, and if they’re following social distancing and lockdown guidelines, therefore enabling a degree of freedom.
There’s a global innovation boom in such products, and many positive noises have been made about Singapore’s TraceTogether – a voluntary tracing app which has been taken up by 20 per cent of the population – and South Korea’s mobile phone contact tracing tech Corona 100m, of which ex-health minister Jeremy Hunt is a fan.
China has of course got extraordinary access to its citizens’ data via apps like AliPay HealthCode, which determines your freedom of movement depending on your circumstances. Israel has HaMagen; India’s Aarogya Setu app has become the world’s most downloaded app in the two weeks of its existence. There’s a German-led attempt to create an EU app and DP-3T is a Bluetooth tracker being developed across eight European countries.
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