Privacy in the midst of a pandemic: can tracking apps help to tackle coronavirus?

Alex Woodruff

As the approach of Western leaders to the coronavirus pandemic comes under increasing scrutiny, our Vice-Chairman explores both the advantages and limitations of digital surveillance as a means of reducing the spread of the virus.

Over 100,000 people have died across the globe, and life as we know it has grinded to a halt. But in Europe, what has been especially unsettling about the coronavirus pandemic is how it seemingly took governments and social systems by surprise, despite the prolonged forewarning provided by the prior spread of the virus through Asia and the Middle East. The lack of government foresight and preparation is hard to fathom in the supposed ‘age of information’. Tools required to track, predict and curb virus outbreaks are good enough in theory, but difficult to effectively allocate in practice.

Mapping population movement has proved invaluable in tracking and responding to recent epidemics. In 2007, the World Health Organization, working with telecom operator Vodafone, distributed GPS-primed mobile phones to track the spread of malaria between the island of Zanzibar and mainland Africa. Malaria is typically not spread over large distances by mosquitoes, which only fly short distances and live for a few days. It is humans who carry the disease across borders. Vodafone’s digital mapping system revolutionised understanding of the disease; before, it was estimated that 1.2 million people were at high risk in the malaria transmission cycle, but the live mapping system revealed the number was only 80,000.

Today, there is agreement that it is vital to use mobile phone data to understand how diseases and pathogens flow through populations. Despite this, digital tracking has only played a modest role in efforts to halt the spread of coronavirus in European countries thus far. In Italy, Spain, Norway and Belgium, aggregated location heat maps have revealed how well restrictions on movement and ramped-up police presence are working. The UK, Portugal and Greece are set to follow suit, but, for many Covid-19 victims, it is too late.

An important factor delaying the introduction of tracking systems is the debate over privacy; how much personal information should governments and private companies be granted? Whilst many leaders and security agencies are keen to track population movement on an aggregated level, there is wariness of the prospect of monitoring and distinguishing people individually.

The implementation of individual tracing in South Korea was so successful in contributing to the plateau of the coronavirus curve that the country became a model case for the control of infectious diseases. South Korea's phone companies have access to each user's national ID number, allowing the government to easily attain the locations of people with confirmed infections and then directly communicate instructions to isolate. Individualised location data was further utilised in a mobile notification system which alerts South-Koreans to the movements of all potentially contagious people in their neighbourhoods.

Despite having been forced into the temporary sacrifice of free movement of people as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, it is evident that European public remains generally unreceptive to the notion of sacrificing personal privacy for the greater good. The European Commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, has called on operators to hand over aggregated location data, but insists that “in no way are we going to track individuals. That’s absolutely not the case. We are talking about fully anonymised, aggregated data to anticipate the development of the pandemic.” Such assurances, promising that individuals won’t be tracked, demonstrate an awareness among European officials that the public will not blindly trust governments to respect their privacy, regardless of the circumstances.

Personalised or aggregated, the use of data to track the virus has provoked mounting fears of growing surveillance. Vincent Keunen, who researches methods to securely share health data, voiced concerns over how data might be withheld and repurposed once the crisis is over; “the use of technology should end as soon as the health of the people is guaranteed.” Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, has promised to keep a close eye on companies’ privacy assurances and look for evidence of the prolonged use of health data. It is critical this is regulated properly; overwhelming, long-term infringements upon privacy would likely dampen the public’s spirit and compliance, jeopardising the integrity of lockdowns and social distancing measures.

The EU’s task of establishing guidelines for overseeing the tracing of coronavirus is one with scant direct legal precedent to rely on. Emergency EU measures though, are unlikely to be challenged, at least in the short-term, as the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, includes a clause allowing exceptions for some breaches of liberties that are in the public interest. Whilst several nations have developed their own applications, the European Commission has decided that there should be only one app that everyone is obliged to use. Unifying the sources of coronavirus tracing is the most obvious way to regulate the hoarding or misuse of public data. The UK, on the other hand, must consider its own long-term solution, post-Brexit.

The new frontrunner to develop a corona-tracking -app is the unprecedented collaboration between tech giants Apple and Google, announced on April 11. The mobile phone app would use Bluetooth to keep track of every other phone a person comes into close contact with over the course of a day; if that person later finds out they have Covid-19, they can use the same system to alert all those people, dating back to before they would have become infectious.

Essentially, this proposal is a mid-way compromise; using Bluetooth instead of location tracking will better uphold user privacy, but relying on each user to disclose if they have contracted the virus may limit the app’s effectiveness. The main hope for such an app is pinned on achieving an extremely high usage rate.

It is likely that a coronavirus tracking app will be introduced in the coming weeks, and the importance of this technology cannot be overstated. A functioning and effective tracking app could help governments navigate a reliable path to relaxing lockdowns and social distancing measures. In attempting to curb the rate of infections without illegally infringing on privacy rights, officials and administrators have a balancing act on their hands that is uniquely precarious. What is crucial is that the public always know who to hold accountable for the possession and use of their data. If adequate transparency can be offered from above, the public may display a surprising amount of tolerance and compliance on the ground.