Imagine that tomorrow your government announced that a new App was to be released. That every citizen over the age of 16 would be obliged to install this app on their phone, and would be duty-bound to carry the phone around with them at all times.
Travelling without a phone with the active app install would result in instant imprisonment.
The app would track your every move. And, if you were unlucky enough to be confirmed to have contracted Coronavirus, then would notify all of the people with whom that you had recently had close contact (all of whom would also be carrying the app) to self-isolate. Breaching the instruction to self-isolate would also result in instant imprisonment.
Within weeks the use of the app was promised to bring near normality back to most people for most of the time. We could return to life, with only one minor amendment. The app would be tracking our every move.
The government promised that it wouldn’t use the data in the app for any purpose other than suppressing Coronavirus. And to prevent other pandemic outbreaks in the future.
Would you be willing to give up an element of your privacy to the government to regain your freedom to move, work and associate with other people in the physical world?
If you use a smartphone you already (probably) give most of this kind of information to private companies. Your network provider. Google. Facebook. Apple. Amazon. Microsoft.
They all know already. But aggregated by a single, government organisation? Would you give up that privacy?
mmitII 