As of Saturday the 10th of October, the application ‘Corona Melder’ will become available for every inhabitant of the Netherlands. After a testing period of nearly two months, in which the application was tested in five Municipal and Regional Health Service (GGD) regions, it is time to face the greater public.
Through arbitrary Bluetooth signals, ‘Corona Melder’ recognizes other phones that have the app installed as well. In case you are located closely to another user of the app, the app will save the arbitrary code of the other user. Once an user of the app receives a positive test result for corona, this person will be asked to warn other users via the app. However, this is voluntary. If the positively tested user chooses to inform the users that have been in close contact with them, these users will receive a message regarding the fact that there is a possibility that they are infected with corona. In addition, it provides advice on what to do. When a significant amount of people will really start to make use of the application, and are also willing to warn their co-users in case of a positive corona test, then the application could positively contribute to the process of slowing down the current pace at which the corona virus is spreading.
Yesterday, the Dutch senate approved the temporary law that allows the implementation of the application. However, the introduction of such a corona application can be seen as controversial. Especially the topic of privacy is one that is touched upon regularly. According to the Dutch government, the application only makes use of arbitrary codes sent through Bluetooth, which do not include personal information. In the end of August, the government claimed that the app was entirely safe. However, one month later, a research team of the non-profit consultancy Radically Open Security (ROS) found that through the fact that GGD workers can review if a positively tested person has downloaded the app and made use of the warning signal, the GGD could persuade the tested person to make use of the warning system. Therefore, the information application would not be entirely private. This issue seems to have passed by, however, as applications can never be entirely safe and privacy related issues are always prone to arise at a later stage, question marks about the safety guarantee are easy to raise.
In the end, there will always exist the discussion between those who take the opinion of the government as a guiding voice, especially when it comes to our own health benefits, and the ones that question the credibility of any application when it comes to privacy issues. For both parties there is a lot to say. However, in crisis situations like the current corona pandemic these discussions might enter different directions than without a crisis. To what extent do we allow ourselves and others to be critical about possible privacy issues when choices need to be made on short terms, and health is at risk?
References:
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-app/vraag-en-antwoord/hoe-werkt-de-corona-app
Dear Emma van der Molen,
I find the article highly interesting and relevant. Personally, I was unaware of the existence of this corona tracking application.
Your argument about privacy to me makes a lot of sense as I imagine the application constantly tracks the geographical position of each user. Indeed, the point you raised about the GGD workers being able to track positively tested corona paints is not the most ethical concerning privacy.
To answer the raised question, I do believe it is important that in the middle of a global pandemic, information about positive tested corona patients should be accurate. Hence, I do not think it is bad that GGD workers can track/verify Covid-19 positive patients. Nevertheless, the user of the application should be made aware of the tracking/verifying.
Kind regards,
Thibault
The subject of this blog post is a rather interesting one. The coronavirus application is highly dependent on what types of personal information people are willing to share. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes a distinction between two different types of personal information: sensitive and non-sensitive personal information. Medical data is considered to be one of the most sensitive classifications of personal data and should therefore only be processed under strict regulations. This is where my concerns with the coronavirus application start.
First of all, the Dutch government has a history of failed IT projects, and therefore my confidence in this application is not high. This is backed up by the fact that, as stated in your post, there was a security breach identified during the testing phase. Besides, for the application to be effective there are a lot of people needed that will be honest about their test results and that are willing to share their testing information with the application.
This brings up another concern of mine. There are already a lot of people who are stupidly enough ignoring recommendations to self-isolate. And since the division of people listening to the government advice and the once that don’t is so high, I don’t think the application will work, although I hope it will.
The application will only show it’s true benefit once everyone is engaged in using the application in the correct way. Once there are too few people using the application, the purpose of the application will be hard to achieve. If this is the case then there is already medical data collected and if this data then isn’t used the way it should’ve been used, it would be a big impact on the privacy of application users.
https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/de-ict-projecten-bij-de-overheid-zijn-nog-steeds-een-chaos~b43b1711/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
https://gdpr-info.eu
Hi Emma,
Thanks for your story. In my opinion, the app can only fail. According to various sources, the app has a reliability of 70-75%. This means that many people will be falsely notified that they have come into contact with someone who has had corona. When they get this, they will stop using the app. I also think that the app will not be used by a lot of people. We are already seeing that people are not observing the rules against corona. This indicates how people view corona and the rules. Therefore, it is unlikely that many people will download this app. As is also known, the app can only be a success if a very large part of the population starts using it. The chance that this will actually happen is very small in my opinion. Furthermore, as you yourself indicate, there are many doubts about privacy. This also reduces the chance of participants.