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Content type: Explainer
In a scramble to track, and thereby stem the flow of, new cases of Covid-19, Governments around the world are rushing to track the locations of their populace. One way to do this is to write a smartphone app which uses Bluetooth technology, and encourage (or mandate) that individuals download and use the app. We have seen such examples in Singapore and emerging plans in the UK.
Apps that use Bluetooth are just one way to track location. There are several different technologies in a smartphone…
Content type: Case Study
In Peru, you get asked for your fingerprint and your ID constantly - when you’re getting a new phone line installed or depositing money in your bank account – and every Peruvian person has an ID card, and is included in the National Registry of Identity – a huge database designed to prove that everyone is who they say they are. After all, you can change your name, but not your fingerprint.
However, in 2019 the National Police of Peru uncovered a criminal operation that was doing just that:…
Content type: Examples
Together with Norwegian company Simula the Norwegian Institute of Public Health is developping a voluntary app to track users geolocation and slow the spread of Covid-19. Running in the background, the app will collect GPS and Bluetooth location data and store them on a server for 30 days. If a user is diagnosed with the virus, its location data can be user to trace all the phones that have been in close contact with the person. Authorities will use this data to send an SMS only to those phones…
Content type: Examples
In response to a case brought by the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah), the Arab Joint List, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction on March 19 limiting the the state's and the Shin Bet security service's use of cellphone surveillance, among others, to track and monitor COVID-19 patients and trace their contacts. The court indicated it will ban the programme unless a parliament oversight committee is…
Content type: Examples
The Romanian government has formally notified the Council of Europe under Article 15, paragraph 3 of the ECHR of the country's state of emergency decree, noting that some of the measures being taken involve derogations from the obligations under the Convention.
Source: https://rm.coe.int/09000016809cee30
Writer: Permanent Representation of Romania
Publication: Official letter
Content type: Examples
On March 14, Romanian president Klaus Iohannis announced a state of emergency to make it possible to allocate new resources for crisis management, and urged the public to follow isolation guidelines and hygiene rules. The Parliament must approve within five days, and the state of emergency lasts 30 days. The decree allows the government to carry out checks on persons and places, order temporary closures of shops and other public places, halt the distribution of publications or broadcasts, and…
Content type: Examples
Aided by its small size, Singapore's contact tracing efforts were a key element of controlling the virus's spread; detectives used CCTV footage to locate the contacts of more than 6,000 people. Singapore also contacts individuals required to self-isolate several times a day and requires them to send photographic proof of their location. Breaking quarantine attracts substantial penalties, including jail terms, and in one case stripped an offender of his residency rights. Singapore also quickly…
Content type: Examples
To contain the coronavirus, Vietnam focused on aggressive contact tracing, forced quarantines for all people arriving in the country, cancelling all foreign flights, conscripting medical students and retired doctors and nurses, instituting surveillance, and mobilising medical and military personnel as well as its national network of informants. As of March 24, the country had reported 123 confirmed cases and no deaths; as of March 20 the country had tested 15,637 people. About 800 people have…
Content type: Examples
Taiwan, linked by direct flights to Wuhan, moved to contain the virus as soon as reports of the Wuhan outbreak emerged. At the end of January, it suspended flights from China, and integrated its national health database with its immigration and customs information in order to trace potential cases. This enabled the country to send text messages to every phone on the island listing every restaurant, tourist site, and destination passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship visited during shore…
Content type: Examples
The new Singaporean app, TraceTogether, developed by the Government Technology Agency in collaboration with the Ministry of Health was launched on March 20 after eight weeks of development. The app, which can be downloaded by anyone with a Singapore mobile number and a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, asks users to turn on Bluetooth and location services, and enable push notifications. The app works by exchanging short-distance Bluetooth signals between phones to detect other users within two…
Content type: Examples
Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin has ordered the country's Communications Ministry to develop a system, to be built on analysing specific individuals' geolocation data from telecommunications companies that can track people who have come into contact with those who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The data will also be passed to regional-level task forces fighting the virus's spread; officials are also tasked with finding a way to notify those who may have come into…
Content type: Examples
On March 14, the Peruvian government set up a website for individuals to check their symptoms so they can be directed towards sources of help. The web form asks for ID number, phone, email and home address.
Source: https://www.gob.pe/coronavirus
Writer: Peruvian government
Publication: Peruvian government
Content type: Examples
Under a new protocol, international passengers arriving at Lime's Jorge Chavez International Airport or by ship at Callao Port, is referred to medical staff if they are arriving from places with confirmed cases, even if they are asymptomatic. Passengers who show symptoms in transit are transferred to isolation areas, where they receive care. The passengers are also required to supply personal information so they can be surveilled over the following days.
Source: https://andina.pe/ingles/…
Content type: Examples
After Pakistani residents queried whether messages labelled "CoronaALERT" sent out via SMS were legitimate, telecom authorities confirmed that it was authentic, being sent to selected individuals at the request of the Ministry of Health under the Digital Parkistan programme. Individuals were chosen because they might have come in contact with infected individuals during travel or in specific locations. It is not clear, however, what the criteria were for selecting individuals at risk,…
Content type: Examples
To counter the many rumours, fake news, and hoaxes spreading in Myanmar, the country's Ministry of Health and Sports launched a website in collaboration with state and regional governments with videos about the virus, the latest data, and updates on the latest number of cases and lab results in order to raise awareness on how both medical staff and the public and stay safe. The agency share information and collaborates with the Ministry of Transport and Communications to "track down people…
Content type: Examples
Malaysia will use both government-owned drones and drones borrowed from local industries under the direction of the armed forces and on-the-ground police to monitor compliance with the Movement Control Order. Because Malaysia doesn't have enough drones to cover the whole country, they will be focused on 12 hotspots where people resist compliance.
Source:
https://www.commercialdroneprofessional.com/coronavirus-malaysia-to-use-drones-to-control-public-movement/
https://www.malaymail.com/…
Content type: Examples
The Indonesian Doctors Association has asked the government to open up the identity of patients who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in order to facilitate contact tracing and improve the efficiency of efforts to prevent further spread, arguing that in an emergency like this the public will support the disclosure in the interests of safety.
Source: https://mediaindonesia.com/read/detail/296992-permudah-kontak-tracing-idi-dorong-pemerintah-buka-data-pasien
Writer: Atalya…
Content type: Examples
The first two confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia and their neighbours became the targets of media coverage and social media abuse after their personal details were spread via WhatsApp and other social media soon after the President announced the positive tests results - before anyone told the patients themselves. The Health Ministry denied responsibility for the data breach.
Sources:
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/04/covid-19-patients-become-victims-of-indonesias-lack-of-…
Content type: Examples
Technology such as Hong Kong's electronic monitoring bracelets, used to ensure that people do not break their mandated quarantine, may appear reasonable during a pandemic, but could be problematic if deployed widely and used to identify those who have joined anti-government protests. The same applies to emergency legislation such as that passed by the UK government granting the government extraordinary new powers to shut down airports and ban gatherings. History provides examples:…
Content type: Examples
The Hong Kong Department of Health has asked the police to deploy its computerised Major Incident Investigation and Disaster Support System in order to trace the contacts of patients infected by the novel coronavirus. The request for the system, which was used during the SARS epidemic in 2003, came after 59 police officers were placed under quarantine after a 48-year-old officer they had partied with tested positive.
Source: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/22/…
Content type: Examples
At the MIT Media lab, Ramesh Raskar is leading a team that includes software engineers at companies such as Facebook and Uber to develop the free and open source app Private Kit: Safe Paths. The app is intended to share encrypted information between phones in the network without going through a central authority so that individuals can see if they've come in contact with someone carrying the coronavirus. Anyone who tests positive can choose to share location data with health officials, who can…
Content type: Examples
After Asian countries used mass surveillance of smartphones to trace contacts and halt the spread of the coronavirus, Western countries such as the UK and Germany are trying to find less-invasive ways to use phones to collect and share data about infections that would work within data privacy laws and retain public trust. Nearly half of virus transmissions may occur before the individual shows symptoms of the disease. At Oxford researchers are working on a notification app that would notify…
Content type: Examples
Facebook's scientists are analysing location data about compliance with social distancing recommendations in various countries using information from a private vault of location information its apps have collected. The analysis shows that only "very modest" changes in habits in the US, France, and the UK, and much more substantial change in Spain and Italy between mid-February and mid-March. Other companies such as Google and Apple, may also be able to contribute insights into public behaviour…
Content type: Examples
Because tracking and limiting the movement of those suspected to be carrying COVID-19 carriers has been a factor in flattening the exponential curve of cases in places like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, Professor Marylouise McLaws, a technical advisor to the WHO's Infection Prevention and Control Global Unit and a professor at the University of New South Wales, believes that we should use travellers' smartphones to electronically monitor their compliance with self-isolation orders.…
Content type: Case Study
Having a right to a nationality isn’t predicated on giving up your right to privacy - and allowing whichever government runs that country to have as much information as they want. It is about having a fundamental right to government protection.
For the first time since 1951, Assam - a state in the north east of India - has been updating its national register of citizens (NRC), a list of everyone in Assam that the government considers to be an Indian citizen. The final version, published in…
Content type: Examples
According to information collected by Le Temps, telco Swisscom will use SIM card geolocation data to communicate to federal authorities when more than 20 phones are detected in an 100 square meters area. Gathering of more than 5 people are forbidden in Switzerland since March 21.
Data collected by the telco should theoretically only come from public areas and not private building. This data will be anonymised and aggregate before being passed to the health authorities (Office fédéral de la…
Content type: Examples
The Belgian Minister of Public Health has approved a programme under which telephone companies Proximus and Telenet will transfer some of their their data to the private third-party company Dalberg Data Insights in order to help combat the coronavirus epidemic; Orange has also agreed "in principle". The details are still to be agreed pending a legal and technical analysis of the proposed project. So far it has been reported that location data and real-time tracking would be used to assess the…
Content type: Examples
Researchers at the University of Oxford are working with the UK government on an app similar to the smartphone tracking system China developed to alert people who have come in contact with someone infected with the coronavirus. The British app, which would be associated with the country's National Health Service,, would rely on the public volunteering to share their location data out of a sense of civic duty rather than, as in China, compulsion. The service would not publish the movements of…
Content type: Examples
Russia has set up a coronavirus information centre to to monitor social media for misinformation about the coronavirus and spot empty supermarket shelves using a combination of surveillance cameras and AI. The centre also has a database of contacts and places of work for 95% of those under mandatory quarantine after returning from countries where the virus is active. Sherbank, Russia's biggest bank, has agreed to pay for a free app that will provide free telemedicine consultations.
Source:…
Content type: Examples
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has authorised the country's internal security agency to use a previously secret tranche of mobile phone geolocation data, gathered to combat terrorism, to retrace the movements of individuals with confirmed cases of the coronavirus and identify people they've interacted with who should be quarantined. After Parliament's Secret Services Subcommittee ended its discussions without approving the measure, Netanyahu said the government would approve…