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Content type: Examples
Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health has released a new mobile app, "Stay Home", to ensure those asked to self-quarantine are abiding by the isolation rules. Everyone subject to quarantine is expected to download the app and create a user name and password; the user must also grant access to camera, media, location, audio, and calls. The app then sends alerts asking them to stay within their designated area and periodically sends notifications asking users to check by taking and sending a photo.…
Content type: Examples
More than 3 million people in the UK have downloaded the JoinZoe COVID Symptom Tracker, which was designed by doctors and scientists at King's College London, Guys and St Thomas' Hospitals working in partnership with the health science company ZOE Global Ltd and endorsed by governments and NHS in Scotland and Wales, and supported by numerous UK health charities. The app asks for some basic information, including an email address, after which it asks you to check in once a day to say whether you…
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At least four law enforcement agencies in the US - two in California, and one in each of Maryland and Texas - are using drones to communicate with homeless people about maintaining social distance because encampments are located in areas that are difficult to access and police do not have to visit in person. Critics complain that the move increases encampment dwellers' already-high distrust in government. Many of the drones are being donated by the China-based drone company DJI as part of the…
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Hawaii governor David Ige has ordered all travellers to the island US state arriving between March 26 and May 31 to self-quarantine for 14 days. Violating the order is a criminal offence and subject to a $5,000 fine and up to a year's imprisonment. In addition, the Department of Transportation requires all travellers into Hawaii and (from April 1) between the Hawaiian islands to complete and sign a form giving their name, address, phone number, destination, and purpose of their travel.…
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A reverse-engineering analysis of Vietnam's official Bluetooth-based contact tracing app, Bluezone, which was developed by a coalition of local technology companies and the Ministry of Information and Communications, shows that the app is broadcasting a fixed six-character ID the app assigned to each installation. The app, which is intended to alert people who may have come into contact with the virus while preserving their anonymity, comes in both iOS and Android versions, and quickly…
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Among several other digital contact tracing options, the New Zealand government is considering distributing Bluetooth enabled credit card-sized "CovidCards" to all 5 million New Zealanders. The card solves some problems such as lack of access to or comfort with smartphones for 19% of the population, and opting out would be a simple matter of leaving the card at home.
The private consortium backing the card estimates, based on Singapore's experience and the fact that 51% of smartphone…
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In February, before the pandemic was declared, the Myanmar Post and Telecommunications Department set a deadline of April 30 for citizens to register their mobile phone SIMs, a move the PTD said was necessary to enhance the security of electronic transactions and cut down crime.
The PTD issued an official reminder on April 16, and confirmed on April 29 that other than websites and applications for registration operators would be required to block calls and data for unregistered users on the…
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Citing privacy concerns, the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee voted to block the Israeli government’s request for an extension to police powers to requisition mobile phone roaming data relating to those ordered to quarantine for enforcement purposes.
Access had been granted for a month, and was due to expire. In the month the police had access, they conducted around 500 random mobile phone location checks per day, drawn from a list of 13,500 people provided by the Health…
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The Indian authorities have said that the country's contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu ("health bridge", in Sanskrit), will be voluntary - but mandatory for federal government employees, food delivery workers, and some other service providers. It may also be needed to access public transport and airports after the nationwide lockdown is lifted.
The app uses Bluetooth and location services to trace users' contacts, and keeps the personal data it collects on the phone, encrypted, until it is…
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The Internet Freedom Foundation has sent a legal notice to the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India, Limited (BECIL), a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, calling on the organisation to modify a tender seeing procurement of a "Personnel Tracking GPS Solution" and "COVID-19 Patient Tracking Tool" intended for the organisation's employees.
IFF is concerned that the procurement items, while nominally intended to address health risks, will certainly…
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The mother of a six-month-old baby in Aurora, Ontario was fined C$880 after police accused her of standing for more than two minutes under a gazebo in a park; she claims she pulled into the gazebo to allow people to pass on the path and answered a text before moving back onto the path. The mother reported that the police officer who issued the fine did not observe social distancing and was not wearing personal protective equipment. The incident occurred a week after the city of Toronto stopped…
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Under Ontario's Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, which prohibits gatherings of more than five people, public health officials in Ottawa are pushing citizens to avoid even apparently innocuous activities such as talking across a fence to a neighbour or drinking a beer on your home's driveway with a friend, on the grounds that these can escalate into parties.
Source: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/physical-distancing-loopholes-need-to-stop-ottawa-health-official-says/…
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In one of its pandemic-related emergency orders, the Canadian province of Ontario has extended to police officers, First Nations constables, special constables, and municipal by-law enforcement officers the power to require those facing charges under the emergency laws to give their name, date of birth, and address or face fines of up to C$750 for non-compliance.
Source: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/those-violating-ontario-s-emergency-orders-must-id-themselves-or-face-steep-fine-1.4877062…
Content type: Examples
Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial governments across have put in place numerous emergency measures to curtail behaviour in order to curb the spread of COVID-19. The orders include placing people under quarantine, limiting gatherings, closing schools and businesses, barring most visits to long-term care homes, prohibiting price gouging on necessary goods, and permitting audiovisual witnessing of signatures on wills and powers of attorney.
Source: https://www.intrepidpodcast.com/blog…
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Every person placed in quarantine in Bahrain will be required to wear an electronic bracelet to ensure compliance. Mohammad Ali, head of electronic government, said that people fitted with the bracelets will have to stay within 15 metres of their mobile phones, which will be linked to the bracelets via the country's contact tracing app BeAware.
Violators face one or both of a minimum of three months in jail or a fine of between BHD1,000 (£2,140) and BHD10,000 (£21,400). Those in quarantine may…
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Two million people downloaded Australia's COVIDSafe app in the first four days it was available; the government's goal is to reach 10 million, or about 40% of the population. Users are asked for a (not necessarily real) name, age, mobile number, and postal code. The app exchanges a Bluetooth handshake when it comes within 1.5 metres of another app user, then logs the handshake and encrypts the exchange.
The data is used to notify users if they have come within close contact for 15 or more…
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The automated facial recognition company Clearview AI has suggested to US federal and state authorities that its facial biometrics could leverage cameras already in place at gyms and retailers in order to identify individuals in the interests of contact tracing.
Simultaneously, the company is asking for a stay in a privacy lawsuit in federal court in Illinois under the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act. The company wants the case to be moved to the Southern District of New York, where…
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To speed up daily temperature checks, Amazon has installed thermal cameras to screen workers for coronavirus symptoms in its warehouses around the world. Cases of COVID-19 have been reported at more than 50 of the company's US warehouses. Thermal cameras will also replace thermometers at staff entrances to many of Amazon's Whole Foods stores. Workers have claimed it is almost impossible to socially distance inside the warehouses.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52356177
Writer:…
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The Israeli company Cellebrite, best known for providing hacking software to help law enforcement agencies get inside suspects' iPhones, is now pitching its technology to help authorities pull the location data and contacts off the phones of newly-diagnosed COVID-19 patients in order to "quarantine the right people", as the company emailed to the Delhi police force.
Cellebrite is one of at least eight surveillance and cyber-intelligence companies that are attempting to repurpose their…
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Police will be barred from accessing metadata collected by Australia's proposed coronavirus contact tracing app, which will be able to identify when users have been 1.5 metres of each other for more than 15 minutes, Australia's government services minister, Stuart Robert, and prime minister, Scott Morrison, have promised. Only state health investigators will access the data, even though experts say that the 2018 telecommunications laws potentially allow law enforcement access. Critics are…
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The US Department of Health and Human Services has awarded a contract to build a database system, HHS Protect Now, to track the spread of the coronavirus across the US to the data-mining company Palantir. Palantir founder and investor Peter Thiel was US president Donald Trump's earliest and highest-profile Silicon Valley backer. The platform pulls data from across the federal, state, and local governments as well as health care facilities and colleges, and works with the Centers for Disease…
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NHS England is using Yoti's digital ID card solution to verify health care workers' identity; the cards are added to staff phones, enbaling them to use a contactless ID app to prove their identity both online and offline. Yoti is providing the system for free for three months to all public health organisations, emergency services, and community initiatives working to contain the pandemic.
Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202004/uk-national-health-service-rolls-out-yotis-biometric-…
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The Turkish Health Ministry's Pandemic Isolation Tracking Project is using mobile device location data to track patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and ensure they obey the government's quarantine requirements. Violators will be sent warning messages and their information will be shared with the police if they do not return to isolation. Law enforcement officers can access individuals' information during road stops. Before launching the system, the Communications Directorate obtained permissions…
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When the phone belonging to an American University student in Taiwan, who was subject to 14 days' quarantine after returning from Europe, ran out of battery power, in less than hour he had received phone calls from four different local administrative units, a text message notifying him he would be arrested if he had broken quarantine, and a visit from two police officers. The phone tracking system uses phone signals to triangulate locations of the more than 6,000 people subject to home…
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By May 11, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, working with EFPL and ETH Zurich, will launch a secure, decentralised system for contact tracing developed by the Decentralised Privacy-Preserving-Proximity Tracing (DP-3T) international consortium, whose Swiss partners are Ubique and PocketCampus. Other international partners include UCl, KU Leuven, TU Delft, the University of Oxford, and the Universirty of Torino. The system has been posted to Github as an open source protocol and will…
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A data breach that posted 100 to 200 names, email addresses, and encrypted passwords online was found in the Belgian Covid-19 Alert! app, one of seven candidates for adoption by the Dutch government. The app identifies phones that have been close to each other via Bluetooth signals and can send them a message when one owner tests positive. The developers said the data leaked from a database relating to another project when the source code was hurriedly placed online for government scrutiny.…
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Liechtenstein is the first European country to use biometric electronic bracelets to implement a real time coronavirus tracking programme. The bracelet, which sends skin temperature, breathing, and pulse, among other metrics, for analysis in a Swiss lab, is being offered to 5% of the population. The country, which acted early to prevent the epidemic, plans to roll the bracelets out to the entire population by autumn.
Source: https://inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-testing-latest-…
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Thousands of Israelis have been ordered into quarantine without any right of appeal based on cellphone tracking that may be wrong because phone geolocation is insufficiently fine-grained to tell the difference between two people being in the same room and being separated by a door when dropping off and receiving a food delivery. Numerous agencies are performing the kind of tracking formerly carried out only by the domestic security agency, Shin Bet. Among them are Shin Bet itself, which is…
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In Haiti, the National Identification Office has been extremely crowded, despite the government requirement to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people. The cards, which include a photo, name, date of birth, and registry number, are required for bank transactions and other official purposes.
Source: https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/haitians-seeking-national-id-cards-say-government-violating-its
Writer: Sandra Lemaire and Matiado Vilme
Publication: VOA News
Content type: Examples
Ghana's opposition party, the National Democratic Congress, has blamed a spike in cases of COVID-19 on the National Identification Authority's refusal to suspend its registration efforts in the country's Eastern Region even though two citizens filed for a court injunction to halt the operation and even though the conditions violated the country's social distancing directives. Registrants were forced to share fingerprint scanners and wait in overcrowded conditions. Public pressure later forced…