by
Les May
THAT’s
the strategy to eliminate the SARS-CoV-2
recommended by the World
Health Organisation
(WHO). Professor
Christophe Fraser, of
Oxford University’s
Big Data Institute
has said “Our
mathematical modelling suggests that traditional public health
contact tracing methods are too slow to keep up with this virus.”
A team of medical researchers
at Oxford University are currently exploring the feasibility of a
coronavirus mobile app for instant contact tracing. However
it has been suggested that this approach will only
work effectively if at
least 60 percent of
people use the ‘app’.
There
does not seem much evidence that the government adopted the WHO
strategy
with any degree of seriousness during the so called ‘containment
phase’
of the Covid19
pandemic in the UK and some people might think this is a cheapskate
approach instead of making a serious effort to implement the tried
and tested ‘traditional’
approach which
has been used in tackling such diseases as Ebola.
Such
an
‘app’
would give the Government access to health and location data and
might be considered too
intrusive and represent
an
unprecedented level of surveillance.
However
there are two points which may make some users less uneasy about the
privacy implications. The first is that so far as I am aware the
technology will be based on Bluetooth
equipped phones communicating with each other and Bluetooth has a
very limited range, typically 5 to 10 metres.
The
other which I think is more significant is that the computer code
which will enable devices to communicate with each other will be
‘open
source’.
What this means is that the
eyes of thousands of programmers
anywhere
in the world
will
be able to examine the code to ensure that there are no ‘backdoors’
which security agencies can exploit to
conduct covert surveillance.
I
have been using an open source operating system and open source
software for nine years. That
means I don’t have to endure the horror that is Windows
10
and I the additional pleasure of
not contributing to
Microsoft’s
profits.
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