When it comes to combating COVID-19, many medical professionals say that contact tracing could be our best shot. And contact tracing apps are integral to this process.
But these apps must prioritize privacy while they track us, researchers argue.
Contact tracing involves tracing an infection through everyone that a sick person has interacted with. It also involves retracing their travel and determining high-risk areas for infection.
Contact tracing apps condense that information into something that users can refer to:
"These Apps would allow the persons with whom an infected person had physical interaction to be notified, thus enabling them to go into quarantine. The Apps would work by using Bluetooth or geolocation data present in smartphones."
An open letter written by more than 300 researchers explains the security risk and privacy risk associated with contact tracing apps, particularly those that use GPS:
"Though the effectiveness of contact tracing Apps is controversial, we need to ensure that those implemented preserve the privacy of their users, thus safeguarding against many other issues, noting that such Apps can otherwise be repurposed to enable unwarranted discrimination and surveillance.
Some of the Bluetooth-based proposals respect the individual's right to privacy, whilst others would enable (via mission creep) a form of government or private sector surveillance that would catastrophically hamper trust in and acceptance of such an application by society at large. It is crucial that citizens trust the applications in order to produce sufficient uptake to make a difference in tackling the crisis. It is vital that, in coming out of the current crisis, we do not create a tool that enables large scale data collection on the population, either now or at a later time."
That's a scary theoretical future.
To ensure the privacy of users, the open letter provides four privacy principles for these contract tracing apps to adopt as the technology moves forward:
Researchers like some contact tracing app initiatives, such as the Apple and Google joint effort, which will use Bluetooth. This transmits less data than GPS.
"Research has demonstrated that solutions based on sharing geolocation (i.e., GPS) to discover contacts lack sufficient accuracy and also carry privacy risks because the GPS data is sent to a centralized location. For this reason, Bluetooth-based solutions for automated contact tracing are strongly preferred when available."
SecureWorld covered the Apple and Google initiative last week:
How do you feel about contract tracing apps? Do the benefits outweigh the risks?
As you form your opinion, read the Open Letter on Contract Tracing Privacy.