Summary

The article discusses the global implementation and challenges of COVID-19 contact-tracing apps, highlighting differences in adoption, privacy concerns, and technological approaches across various countries.

Abstract

As nations grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, contact-tracing apps have emerged as a tool to control the virus's spread. The article provides an overview of these apps' adoption and effectiveness in countries like the United States, Singapore, Israel, and South Korea. It underscores the widespread privacy concerns and the varying degrees of public trust in these technologies. Despite the potential benefits, the effectiveness of such apps is often hindered by low adoption rates, with the U.S. facing significant skepticism and only a few states embracing the technology. Singapore and Israel have seen moderate adoption, yet they face criticism over privacy and the involvement of security agencies. South Korea's mandatory and highly invasive apps have been effective but raise significant privacy issues. In Europe, the debate between centralized and decentralized data storage reflects broader concerns about government surveillance and individual privacy. The article also questions the reliability of Bluetooth technology for accurate contact tracing, suggesting that GPS might offer a better solution for determining proximity while maintaining privacy.

Opinions

The article suggests that public mistrust, particularly in the U.S., is a significant barrier to the effectiveness of contact-tracing apps, with only a small percentage of states adopting the technology.
Privacy concerns are a common theme globally, with citizens wary of government and big tech surveillance.
The effectiveness of contact-tracing apps is contingent upon high adoption rates, with experts suggesting at least 60% is necessary for them to be beneficial.
The involvement of security agencies in contact tracing, as seen in Israel, has been met with public backlash and has since been halted.
South Korea's approach, while effective, involves a deep invasion of privacy with no opt-out option, leading to public fatigue from constant notifications.
The article highlights a technological divide in Europe, with some countries preferring a decentralized approach that keeps data on users' devices, while others opt for centralized data storage, which could lead to cross-border compatibility issues.
There is skepticism about the use of Bluetooth technology for contact tracing, with concerns about false positives due to signal penetration through walls and the need for apps to remain active on iPhones.
The article raises long-term concerns about the potential misuse of contact-tracing technology by governments, citing examples of malware embedded in apps, and emphasizes the importance of remaining vigilant about privacy rights.

Contact-Tracing apps around the world

The differences and challenges we face worldwide and on a small scale

Now that countries are slowly opening up their borders, the question becomes: how can we trace the virus effectively? The first wave is getting behind us and many countries in the world are looking at the application of COVID-19 tracing apps, all with different approaches. In this article I give a small overview of countries that have contact-tracing app implemented and where the differences and challenges lay in these approaches.

United States

First of all, let’s take a look at the USA. In early polls it was found that more than half of American citizens who have smartphones (82% of the American population) were unwilling to use a COVID-19 tracking app. This is mostly due to the mistrust people have in big tech companies, such as Google who co-designed contact-tracing technology together with Apple.

As of June 10th, only three states have confirmed plans to use the technology. A lot of wariness and little trust, which is bad for the app itself because for general effectiveness to take place a country needs at least a 60% adoption rate.

Let's take a look at some cases where contact-tracing apps are already adopted for a longer period. Is it successful? And is there a sense of criticism as well towards these apps?

Singapore

One of the first places where a corona app was implemented was Singapore. The app is called “Tracetogehter” and has over 1.6 million downloads. With a population of 5.6 million that close to 30% of the population. That is by far not enough for it to be effective. Like in the US, there are a lot of privacy concerns in Singapore and the app drains your phone’s battery.

To up these numbers and to gain more users, the government has recently issued wearable tokens. It works the same way as the app, it exchanges Bluetooth signals between devices that are close to each other for a period of time. It won’t drain phone batteries so the hope is that this token will make the contact-tracing more effective with more users.

Israel

The contact-tracing app in Israel is called “HaMagen” (English: The Shield). 1.5 million people (20%) have voluntarily downloaded the app and it works over WiFi and GPS data. Not much has been said about the effectiveness of this app, but given the previous cases, the usage needs to increase as well.

There has been controversy about the involvement of the Israeli security agency “Shin Bet”, which had access to all of its citizen's movements through surveillance technology in the app. Normally this agency is responsible for the safety of the country by tracking down criminals and terrorists. Due to the controversy, this feature has now been halted.

South Korea

South Korea is one of the few countries where contact-tracing apps are indeed popular among citizens, despite the deep invasion of privacy (it is also mandatory for everyone to participate).

In South Korea, there are two different kinds of apps. An app made by the government meant to track the whereabouts of quarantined people and a lot of different commercially made apps that can track the movements of infected people. If you’ve been near someone that was infected, you get a text message. With no possibility to opt-out, this leads to tens of text messages each day, which drive a lot of people insane.

These apps use the most data out of the before-mentioned apps in Singapore and Israel. Where those apps limit themselves with only Bluetooth or GPS data, the South Korean apps use location info from credit card transactions, GPS data, and CCTV footage. These are very privacy invasive apps, e.g. routes that infected people have taken are published online, but the apps work and are effective.

Europe

These are some diverse cases all around the world in which you can see quite different approaches to the use of technology and privacy issues. You can also see a lot of diversity in approaches on a much smaller scale in Europe. In most of the European countries, such as Germany and Ireland, you see that the decentralized method of tracking is preferred whereas in the United Kingdom and in France they prefer a centralized method.

What is the difference I hear you thinking? Well with the centralized approach, the app takes data from the user’s phone and stores it on a central server. With the decentralized method, your data remains on your phone, so everyone has more control over their own data. The contact-tracing technology of Apple and Google use this decentralized method.

You can imagine, these different approaches can lead to problems once people start travelling again. For example, Ireland prefers the decentralized approach and the UK prefers a centralized approach, so if someone travels from Ireland into Northern-Island the apps are impossible to cooperate with each other.