COVIDSafe app scepticism

[Drop_Bear]

More on the bill:

The COVIDSafe bill doesn't go far enough to protect our privacy. Here's what...

A view from the US (not our COVIDSafe, but similar issues):

Siphoning civil liberties in the name of COVID-19: A research roundup

Contact tracing — monitoring people who’ve come into contact with those diagnosed with COVID-19 — will be a key facet to containing the coronavirus. Apple and Google are developing an opt-in contact tracing system that will work through smartphones.

“There is a risk that this pandemic becomes a slippery slope that encourages more monitoring of the population for other purposes,” says Neil Abernethy, a biomedical informatics professor at the University of Washington. “Researchers and policy-makers alike should work with the public to identify which conditions are acceptable for the use of such information.”

Americans are about evenly divided on whether they think it’s OK for the government to use cellphones to track people who have contracted COVID-19, according to the Pew Research survey. The Northeastern, Harvard and Rutgers researchers found similar results from their survey.

If widespread coronavirus tracking comes to pass, whether that tracking promotes public health while minimally infringing on civil liberties may hinge on a country’s leaders encouraging robust and free public debate — not stifling it.

This topic seems to have become something of a religious war. Not surprising, given that there’s another topic devoted to the righteousness of installing the app.