Page 124 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

confine a person infected by COVID-19 and to enforce
subsequent quarantines or partial lockdowns. From the outset,

China, Hong Kong SAR and South Korea implemented coercive
and intrusive measures of digital tracing. They took the decision to
track individuals without their consent, through their mobile and
credit card data, and even employed video surveillance (in South

Korea). In addition, some economies required the mandatory
wearing of electronic bracelets for travel arrivals and people in
quarantine (in Hong Kong SAR) to alert those individuals
susceptible of being infected. Others opted for “middle-ground”

solutions, where individuals placed in quarantine are equipped
with a mobile phone to monitor their location and be publicly
identified should they breach the rules.

The digital tracing solution most lauded and talked about was
the TraceTogether app run by Singapore’s Ministry of Health. It

seems to offer the “ideal” balance between efficiency and privacy
concerns by keeping user data on the phone rather than on a
server, and by assigning the login anonymously. The contact

detection only works with the latest versions of Bluetooth (an
obvious limitation in many less digitally advanced countries where
a large percentage of mobiles do not have sufficient Bluetooth
capability for effective detection). Bluetooth identifies the user’s
physical contacts with another user of the application accurately to

within about two metres and, if a risk of COVID-19 transmission is
incurred, the app will warn the contact, at which point the
transmission of stored data to the ministry of health becomes

mandatory (but the contact’s anonymity is maintained).
TraceTogether is therefore non-intrusive in terms of privacy, and
its code, available in open source, makes it usable by any country
anywhere in the world, yet privacy advocates object that there are
still risks. If the entire population of a country downloaded the

application, and if there were a sharp increase in COVID-19
infections, then the app could end up identifying most citizens.
Cyber intrusions, issues of trust in the operator of the system and

the timing of data retention pose additional privacy concerns.

Other options exist. These are mainly related to the availability
of open and verifiable source codes, and to guarantees pertaining

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