Whenever we are faced with a problem or a possibility we look to the evolution of technology to help us. Where before we might have made a promise to the fates, we now look to a coder to build an app for our smart device that we wield like a weapon.
All health experts are clear that track and trace and isolate are the ways we can counter the pandemic and it seems natural to assume that our smartphones are the perfect way to facilitate this. If health professionals know where you have been, they can warn those you have been in contact with to stay home and prevent further spread. As we take our phones with us everywhere and they come with a GPS system, logic says that apps could be the way out of this problem.
While these apps are now becoming more and more common, they could with risks and concerns that might impinge on our privacy.
The promises of digital contact tracing
Traditional contact tracing is difficult and largely impossible with a virus so embedded in the population. It requires an infected party to remember who they have been in contact with every day for the time they may have been carrying the virus. In turn, it requires the tracers to have the telephone number or address of all these people. It also relies on people being willing to the advice of those who contact them.
In short, it is logistically challenging and largely ineffective. Once a person has tested positive and then the people tracked and contacted, it is likely many more will have been infected along the way.
One of the ways that we can make this more manageable is with a lockdown, stopping people from meeting with each other. Then, if there is a need to track and trace the numbers should be small. However, this is damaging to the economy of a country and the wellbeing of a population in other ways.
Therefore, using a mobile phone app to track people and to communicate directly to them when they have been exposed offers a promising solution. Countries such as Norway, Taiwan, Italy and Germany have all introduced apps aimed at stopping the spread. They have implemented location and proximity technologies, such as GPS and bluetooth, which can detect a person’s location within about 40 feet.
The use of location tracking in this way is a significant invasion of your privacy. It will track all your movements, including to places you want to keep to yourself, such as a birth control clinic.
A solution for this was to control where the data collected is stored and who has ownership. Technology giants Apple and Google developed an app that used bluetooth and sent the information to a decentralised database that could be used by public health officials. As it is decentralised, the government does not have ownership of the data collected.
The Google/ Apple solution was also developed to be more reliable. Some early apps, employed by nations such as Singapore, do not reliably identify the people who were within 6 feet of each other. Therefore, the effectiveness of the technology was limited. The Exposure Notifications app was designed to increase reliability and efficiency, as well as protect privacy.
The Exposure Notification app requires a person infected to agree to his contacts being downloaded. The system then notifies a contact thanks to the anonymous identifiers that are picked up when people walk close to each other.
So maybe?
The technological developments by the global companies of Google and Apple might give us hope that technology can resolve the issue. A more reliable and anonymous system seems to answer most of the issues.
However, the system is still not perfect and such apps tend to include too many people and cannot tell the difference between those in PPE and those who are not. Equally, it finds it difficult to discern if the people are passing close in a car or not.
Finally, and probably the biggest barrier to smartphones being the solution, those most vulnerable to COVID-19 are unlikely to carry one. Older people find smartphones challenging, as their sight and dexterity is reduced. They may not buy into the latest technology, even if they did have a smartphone. Consequently, the one user demographic you would want to be able to track and trace is out of the reach of such technology. Finally, in countries where liberal values are vital, the mandating of use of such an app is unthinkable. For instance, in the US, only 3 out of 5 people asked by The Washington Post said they would use the app.
The truth is that a contact tracing app can supplement traditional methods of track and trace but cannot replace it. It is impossible to make such a technology the primary means of controlling the pandemic, as use is so patchy and the output limited in efficiency. Concerns about privacy have all but dashed hopes of technology doing more than this, as even with assurance from the tech giants, there is going to be a natural concern about surveillance.