Our right to privacy balances the power between the public, corporations and the state. Most ‘smart’ devices, including phones, leach data from us to feed big tech companies.
I joined Big Brother Watch because I fear we’ve long risked losing the British tradition of civil liberties and are slipping into a surveillance state. But mass uptake will only happen if the public trusts the app and believes it will work. The Government needs the same number of people to use the app as those that use WhatsApp for it to have an impact, around 60 per cent of the population.
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They’re the basis on which people will decide whether to download and use the app or not. Why did he reject the best technology on offer from Apple and Google that does not suffer from these problems? Why is their app good enough for Germany, Italy, and Austria but not for the UK? He cannot simply pretend these concerns don’t matter – they do. He has batted away serious concerns about the GCHQ-backed app – that it centralises data collection that cannot be deleted, sometimes fails when the phone is locked, drains battery, is prone to serious ‘mission creep’ (like policing lockdown) and is likely to break data laws along the way.
But he has failed to answer basic questions. The NHS volunteer army of 750,000 that is serving the most vulnerable people was not conscripted, but instead arose from a sense of duty.Īnd now the Health Secretary tells us that downloading the NHS app is our ‘duty’. We stayed at home because we’ve wanted to protect ourselves and our neighbours. We have not stayed at home because we fear the strong arm of the police. Our country’s response to this pandemic relies on the willing participation of an informed public. In the case of the NHS contact-tracing app, the abandonment of privacy is not only unnecessary, it’s dangerous. But not all of the trade-offs we’ve been asked to make will protect public health. We have suspended liberty itself with the intention of saving lives. A version of this blog is in today’s Daily Mail.Īre we expected to be a nation of citizens on state-issued digital tags?īrits are currently faced with some of the biggest sacrifices we’ve made in generations.
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