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Content type: Examples
Contact tracing apps will only work effectively if people trust them and install them in sufficient numbers. Soon after its launch, however, the North Dakota contact tracing app people were already dropping it after posting complaints in the Google App store. In a survey of 798 Americans, researchers at Microsoft Research, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Zurich found that nearly half said they would not install a COVID-19 contact tracing app that has false negatives or could…
Content type: Examples
On the day South Korea relaxed its social distancing measures, a 29-year-old man tested positive for COVID-19. The previous weekend, he had visited five nightclubs in the gay district of Itweon in Seoul, mingling with around 7,200 other people. After nearly 80 new COVID-19 cases have been linked to that one man's outing, the mayor ordered all clubs and bars closed indefinitely, and led officials to push back reopening schools by a week. Soon aftewards, another infected man was found to have…
Content type: Examples
The best contact tracers in US history were a group of mid-20th century venereal disease investigators working for a programme at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whose strategy eventually led to the eradication of smallpox in the 1970s. Talking to infected people and tracking down their vague descriptions of contacts at a time when VD was a source of shame was challenging; recruits were required to have a college degree, preferably in liberal arts, and a varied background of work…
Content type: Examples
Local health authorities in Germany have relied on human contact tracers since the country confirmed its first COVID-19 cases early in 2020, and say that doing so has helped the country keep its death rate comparatively low even with a less restrictive lockdown than many other countries. Germany aims to have 16,000 contract tracers overall, or five for every 25,000 people. Tracing involves phoning each newly-diagnosed patient and asking their movements; those who have been in close contact for…
Content type: Examples
NHS Digital has added facial recognition to its app, which allows people to order prescriptions, book appointments, and find health care data, in hopes it will also be usable as an "immunity passport" once at-home testing becomes available. The NHS facial recognition system was built by iProov, and is available in England for both Android and iOS devices; users enroll by submitting a photo of themselves from an official document such as a passport or driving licence and then using the phone to…
Content type: Examples
Estonia has begun testing its Immuunsuspass app, which was developed for the Back to Work NGO by the Estonian technology firms Transferwise and Guardtime working with health specialists. The app, which is intended to help schools and employers make decisions, will have to pass scientific consensus before being approved for use. It allows users to access COVID-19 test results for an hour after proving their identity, and issues them with a QR code valid for one minute that they can use to show…
Content type: Examples
Numerous companies are repurposing their body monitors, asset trackers, and electronic ankle monitors and marketing them to the newly-created market for strap-on surveillance bracelets to enforce quarantine and social distancing including companies such as AiRISTA Flow. Redpoint Positioning Corporation, Israel-based SuperCom.
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/25/coronavirus-tracking-bracelets-monitors-surveillance-supercom/
Writer: Sam Biddle
Publication: The Intercept
Content type: Examples
Latvia became one of the first countries to use Apple's and Google's new joint toolkit to launch a smartphone contact tracing app, Apturi Covid. For now, the app will only work for Latvia's 2 million citizens, but the intention is that it should interoperate with the apps other countries to aid travellers.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/short_news/latvia-to-launch-google-apple-friendly-coronavirus-contact-tracing-app/
Writer: Reuters
Publication: Euractiv
Content type: Examples
An Ipsos MORI survey conducted on May 20-22 found generally high levels of compliance with lockdown restrictions, though many were suffering. While roughly three-quarters were confident they could download and operate a contact tracing app and would be willing to comply with its recommendations, only 40% were confident or fairly confident that they could trust the government to protect their and other people's data, and only 42% were confident or fairly confident that the app could help limit…
Content type: Examples
As the first confirmed coronavirus case in Pakistan, Yahyah Jaffery became a pariah after his identity, photograph, and home address were leaked on social media. Similar leaks about dozens of other patients and medical staff followed. The contact tracing system being used for coronavirus was originally developed by the country's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to combat terrorism; it is based on a new data hub in Islamabad that will collect information from the ISI tracking system and share…
Content type: Examples
A remote-controlled yellow and black robot dog built by Boston Dynamics has been deployed in a Singapore central park for a two-week trial in which the dog politely, in a female voice, in English, reminds cyclists and joggers to stay at least one metre apart. Breaking the lockdown rules attracts fines and even jail time. Residents are only allowed to leave home alone for essential trips and must wear a mask at all times in public.
Other robots being trialled include a small car. The robot dog…
Content type: Examples
Under the country's emergency laws, on May 4 the Hungarian government announced it would suspend parts of GDPR and exempted authorities from key provisions such as subject access rights, the right to request erasures, and providing notice that personal information is being collected and stored as long as the data is being collected under the rubric of coronavirus-related health protection.
The changes will remain in place until the government declares the end of the emergency. Opposition…
Content type: Examples
Only 16% of Australians had downloaded the country's COVIDSafe app by May 3, a week after its launch on April 26, even though most said they support the federal government's coronavirus contact tracing app. In an Ipsos poll, 80% of those who said they were unlikely to download the app cited privacy concerns such as who holds and has access to the data, and which country's law applies. The government has said its goal is for at least half of the population to download and install the app.…
Content type: Examples
The Australian journalist Chris Buckley, who reports for the New York Times, was forced to leave China on April 10 after 24 years of reporting on the country, bringing the number of journalists forced out of the country in the last year to 19.
After travelling to Wuhan to report on the unfolding outbreak on the day the city was locked down in January, he was told to stop when his press card expired in February. The division of the Foreign Ministry responsible for international media…
Content type: Examples
The Egyptian president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has approved 18 amendments to the country's emergency law that allow him and security agencies additional powers. Only five of the amendments are clearly related to public health.
Along with closing schools and universities, quarantining people returning to the country, postpone taxes and utility payments, and provide economic support, additions include expanded powers to ban public and private meetings, protects, celebrations, and other forms of…
Content type: Examples
A parliamentary panel granted Israel's Shin Bet security service an additional three weeks to use mobile phone data to track people infected with the coronavirus; prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had requested a six-week extension while his government drafts legislation to regulate the data use in line with requirements imposed by the Israeli Supreme Court. Testimony given to the parliament's intelligence subcommittee showed that the Shin Bet surveillance was the reason it was possible to…
Content type: Examples
After a call from a vendor, India's state-owned Broadcast Engineering Consultants Limited (BECIL) put out an expression of interest for electronic bracelets and accompanying software for use to ensure that COVID-19 patients do not violate their quarantine orders.
A hundred companies responded. BECIL saw the idea as an opportunity to sell a patient surveillance system to municipal corporations, private companies, welfare resident societies, and central government departments. BECIL, which was…
Content type: Examples
A security lapse exposed one of the core databases of the coronavirus self-test symptom checker app launched by India's largest cellphone network, Jio, shortly before the government lockdown began in late March.
The database, which had no password protection and contained millions of logs and records collected during the last two weeks in April, was found by security researcher Anurag Sen on May 1.
Some of the exposed records included individuals who answered a series of questions to create a…
Content type: Examples
Authorities in South Korea, which had been successful in containing the coronavirus early on due to its aggressive testing programme, began trying to trace more than 5,500 people who visited a group of bars between April 2 and May 6 because a single infected customer led to a new outbreak. More than 3,000, some of them for fear of being stigmatised as gay, remained out of reach while the number of cases rose to 101. Gay people have little protection in South Korea, and the news of the…
Content type: Examples
The Indian state of Madhya Pradesh created a COVID-19 dashboard that displayed the names of at least 5,400 quarantined people, their device IDs and names, their OS version, app version codes, current GPS coordinates, and office GPS coordinates. Shortly after the dashboard's existence was posted on Twitter by a French programmer, MAP-IT, the state's IT centre in Bhopal that developed the system, replied that it had been taken down, saying the information was intended to be confidential.
Source…
Content type: Examples
Shortly after launch, security researcher Baptiste Robert discovered that India's contact tracing app, Aarogya Setu ("Health Bridge"), allows users to spoof their GPS location, find out how many people reported themselves as infected within any 500-metre radius, and mount a triangulation attack to confirm someone else's suspected positive diagnosis. The app, which was created by the government's National Informatics Centre, uses GPS to track people's movements rather than Bluetooth as many…
Content type: Examples
The rush to incorporate greater safety from the coronavirus is bringing with it a new wave of workplace surveillance as companies install tracking software to determine who may have been exposed and which areas need deep cleaning if an employee gets infected; monitor social distancing; and use Bluetooth beacons embedded in badges to locate employees.
Companies are also installing thermal cameras to take employees' temperature as they enter the workplace or public area. Companies are also…
Content type: Examples
Amazon has spent $10 million to buy 1,500 cameras to take the temperature of workers from the Chinese firm Zhejiang Dahua Technology Company even though the US previously blacklisted Dahua because it was alleged to have helped China detain and monitor the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
The cameras work by comparing a person’s radiation with a separate infrared calibration device and uses face detection technology to make sure it is looking for heat in the right part of the subjects…
Content type: Examples
In a technical analysis of the UK NHSx contact tracing app for iOS, security engineers find that Apple's Bluetooth design makes it harder to detect iPhones running the app in background mode, and the app is using "keepalive" notifications in order to keep the app able to make the necessary connections. The researchers believe this workaround will work sufficiently well for users in populated areas. The app appears to abide by the privacy safeguards listed in the paper released by the National…
Content type: Examples
Moscow's first attempts to introduce digital methods by which residents could obtain digital passes to move around the city failed as the website collapsed numerous times and the app required them to get a pass for every single move rather than only to drive a car, as the government has stated. City authorities blamed DDoS attackers for the website problems and Muscovites' stupidity for the app issues and similar difficulties with SMS messages. There was also confusion over whether certain…
Content type: Examples
The global pandemic that has been declared by COVID-19 is already affecting countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Recognizing the seriousness of this health crisis and the legal possibility for governments to take exceptional measures to control the pandemic, it is essential to remember that these must be carried out in strict accordance with human rights standards.
Signed by AlSur, a consortium of 11 civil society organizations and academia from various Latin American and Caribbean…
Content type: Examples
The state of Utah gave the AI company Banjo real time access to state traffic cameras, CCTV, and public safety cameras, 911 emergency systems, location data for state-owned vehicles, and other data that the company says it's combining with information collected from social media, satellites, and various apps in order to detect anomalies in the real world and alert law enforcement to crimes as they are happening. The company claims its algorithm can do all this while stripping all personal data…
Content type: Examples
Our partners from IPANDETEC in Panamá wrote about privacy and personal data in the context of the COVID-19 response, stating that throughout Central America, data protection laws and patient privacy lean towards respecting their privacy before the scientific interest of their cases.
Link: https://www.ipandetec.org/2020/03/18/coronavirus-privacidad-datos/
Content type: Examples
Our partners from the Foundation for Media Alternatives in Philippines reported different ways in which the COVID-19 is impacting public health and privacy rights.
Link: https://www.fma.ph/2020/03/15/public-health-and-privacy-amid-covid-19-the-fma-digital-rights-report/
Content type: Examples
Our partners from the Centre for Internet & Society in India wonder themselves whether the use of an official chatbot to advance ‘right information’ is the most efficient way to handle misinformation?. In a recent example, a ministry released advisories on how homeopathy can prevent the coronavirus infection, which was proved to be false by many scientific sources. This heightens the problem of fake news or the spread of i.e. incorrect information as it comes from an official source.
Link…