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Australia’s COVIDsafe to Singapore’s TraceTogether: are coronavirus contact tracing apps a panacea, privacy invasion, or simply flawed?
- Countries around the world are seeking a bargain with their citizens: a quicker return to normal life if they download a smartphone app
- But experts warn even beyond the privacy issues, there are limits to the technology that prevent it being a cure-all for our coronavirus woes
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While discussing the time frame for easing restrictions on everyday life during the coronavirus pandemic last month, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison offered the public a deal.
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The more people voluntarily downloaded a smartphone app designed to track the contacts of people infected, Morrison said, the sooner life could return to normal.
“I’ll be calling on Australians to do it as a matter of national service,” Morrison said. “In the same way people used to buy war bonds, back in the war times to come together to support the effort.”
As countries seek to safely ease lockdowns that have crippled economic and social life, authorities around the world are seeking to strike a bargain with their citizens: a quicker return to normal life in return for embracing smartphone apps that streamline the laborious business of contact tracing but raise questions about privacy and remain largely untested.
Australia launched COVIDSafe on Sunday, attracting more than 2 million downloads within 24 hours, after Singapore and Vietnam launched their own contact tracing apps.
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Multiple US states, Japan, Britain, Germany and New Zealand – which on Tuesday eased its near-total lockdown after announcing the elimination of community transmission – are planning to roll out their own apps.
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