Forbes May 4, 2020
Coronavirus contact-tracing apps harm privacy. Regardless of whether they protect the data they collect, they require users to walk around with their smartphones on all the time, which is a privacy risk in itself. More disturbingly, they normalise the idea of our behaviour and actions being directly managed en masse by apps. Both set dangerous precedents for individual privacy and liberty, far in excess of any risk that our health data might be leaked.
Admittedly, Google and Apple have designed their exposure notification API–which they released to developers last week–with privacy and security in mind. But even though their technical specifications describe a decentralised system where data can be stored only on individual devices, any contact-tracing app based around these...
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