Digital contact tracing
[3][4][5] Since the initial outbreak, many groups have developed nonstandard protocols designed to allow for wide-scale digital contact tracing, most notably BlueTrace and Exposure Notification.
On 10 April 2020, Google and Apple jointly announced that they would integrate functionality to support such Bluetooth-based apps directly into their Android and iOS operating systems.
Israel was the only country in the world to use its internal security agency (Shin Bet) to track citizens' geolocations to slow the spread of the virus.
[20] However, cellphone-based location tracking proved to be insufficiently accurate, as scores of Israeli citizens were falsely identified as carriers of COVID-19 and subsequently ordered to self-quarantine.
[21] In an attempt to contain the spread of the Omicron Variant, Israel reinstated the use of Shin Bet counterterrorism surveillance measures for a limited period of time.
[33] Covid Watch was the first organization to develop[34] and open source[35][36] an anonymous, decentralized Bluetooth digital contact tracing protocol, publishing their white paper on the subject on 20 March 2020.
[53] Bluetooth protocols with encryption are perceived to have less privacy problems and have lower battery usage than GPS-based schemes.[6]: table.
On the other hand, digital contact tracing solutions that force users to release their location trails to a central system without encryption can lead to privacy problems.
[59] In Australia[60][61] and New Zealand,[62] respective local governments have later sought to centralize contact tracing by requiring businesses to use the state's QR-code system.
Despite holding the promise to drastically reduce contagion and allow for a relaxation of social distancing measures, digital contact tracing applications have been criticized by academia and the public alike.
[citation needed] Independent audit borrows from the financial accounting industry the process of third-party oversight assuring compliance with existing rules and best-practices.
The third party auditor examines all details of digital contact tracing in the areas of ethics, trust, privacy, bias and cybersecurity.
[97] In most countries, opt-in voluntary usage was insufficient to achieve large reductions in the effective reproduction rate, with Singapore a notable exception.
Other than having doubts about the technical effectiveness of smartphone-based contact tracing systems, publics and academia are confronted with ethical issues about the use of smartphone data by central governments to track and direct citizen behaviour.
[citation needed][101] On privacy, the main problem about digital contact tracing regards type of information which can be collected from each person and the way related data is treated by companies and institutions.
[102] Moreover, critics point out that claims of anonymity and protection of personal data, even if made by institutions, cannot be verified and that individual's user profiles can be traced back in several cases.
[103] Closely related to privacy, comes the issue of surveillance: too much personal data in centralized governmental database could set a dangerous precedent on the way governments are capable of “spying” on individual behaviour.
The possibility that a wide-ranging adoption of digital contact tracing could set a dangerous precedent for surveillance and control has been abundantly treated by media and academia alike.
[103][100] In short, the main concern here relates to the tendency of temporary measures, justified by an emergency situation, to be normalized and extended indefinitely in a society.
[106] Electronic waste may result from the need to purchase a new smartphone to meet the system requirements of smartphone-based digital contact tracing applications.
