Coronavirus: Governments look to surveillance apps to track virus locations and trace contacts of confirmed cases

Countries look to smartphone apps to plot virus hot spots.

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Governments are increasingly using smartphone apps to plot virus hot spots and to trace contacts of confirmed coronavirus sufferers.

Apps are also being increasingly deployed to pinpoint where people go when they leave their homes, to gain insights into the travelling habits.

Google is already tracking users’ movements and publishing anonymised “mobility reports” that profile the movement of the public during the pandemic. This includes data from Australian users and shows changes in people’s use of retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, public transport use as measured by people at transit stations, workplaces and staying at home.

Google says it is posting the mobility reports online initially for 131 countries and regions.

Google has access to a wealth of user data. The Australian last year reported that Android phones transmit a constant stream of user data beyond that revealed publicly.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that both Google and Facebook have been in discussions with the US government over the use of its data.

Tracking apps of some form are already being used in countries in Europe, Central America, India, the Middle East, eastern Europe, Africa, the US and UK, but not in Australia at this stage.

The question is whether the Australian public is prepared to use such an app. In ordinary times, this idea would be branded as a massive intrusion of civil liberties – Big Brother at its worst. But these are not ordinary times.

Contract tracing is another application. It is one of the most powerful ways of tackling a virus outbreak; you can reduce its spread if you can find those who were in close contact with confirmed cases and put them in isolation. In Australia, contract tracing is done manually and takes time.

However smartphone apps are being developed to automate and speed up the process. Oxford University has modelled a smartphone app that offers instant contact tracing should a person test positive to coronavirus.

The public would have to carry their phones with the app installed. The app on one phone would use low energy Bluetooth to detect and record encoded IDs of people nearby. Should a person develop coronavirus, the people they were in contact with can quickly be identified and warned to go into isolation.

An article in the publication Science explains the Oxford concept. “We set out to design a simple and widely acceptable algorithm from epidemiological first principles, using common smartphone functionality,” it says.

“The core functionality is to replace a week’s work of manual contact tracing with instantaneous signals transmitted to and from a central server.

“Coronavirus diagnoses are communicated to the server, enabling recommendation of risk-stratified quarantine and physical distancing measures in those now known to be possible contacts, while preserving the anonymity of the infected individual. Tests can be requested by symptomatic individuals through the app.”

The article in Science shows how some alternate apps work. In China, coronavirus sufferers install an app so that they can move between areas and into public spaces, and use public transport.

“The app allows a central database to collect data on user movement and coronavirus diagnosis and displays a green, amber or red code to relax or enforce restrictions on movement.

“The database is reported to be analysed by an artificial intelligence algorithm that issues the colour codes. The app is a plug-in for the WeChat and Alipay Apps and has been generally adopted.”

South Korea has been broadcasting text messages to the public about people who have tested positive. Click a link, and you can see the areas a confirmed virus carrier has visited. Sufferers are not named, but some have been traced to less salubrious locations and activities, and been the subject of gossip.

The app designed by the Oxford team wouldn’t offer open access to another person’s location history, but you would be notified of your contact with someone who had the virus, and asked to self isolate. Oxford says it is working with health authorities in the UK and Norway on the feasibility of this.

Two weeks ago the Israeli Government announced it would trace people suspected or confirmed with coronavirus. It planned to use software designed for counter-terrorism. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the technology would be in use for 30 days.

The Australian Government has been developing a general information app on coronavirus for the public, and it is understood some state governments are looking at apps to assist their health care efforts and to provide the public with information about the location of coronavirus outbreaks.

NSW is now revealing the spread of the virus by local government area.

Original story: April 1, 2020. Updated April 4, 2020.