Failure to adopt Apple and Google’s contact-tracing tool could make travel difficult

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bluetooth-tracing
A short primer on contact-tracing.
Photo: Apple/Google

The UK’s National Health Service has launched its contact-tracing app — but experts quoted by the Daily Mail Tuesday claim that its non-privacy focused approach to tracking the spread of coronavirus could make it illegal.

They also claim its incompatibility with Apple and Google’s contact-tracing API may cause chaos for traveling Brits.

The NHSX app, which is being launched on the UK’s Isle of Wight today, with a wider rollout coming soon, takes a different approach to contact-tracing than the API developed by Apple and Google. Apple and Google’s technology is being adopted in Europe, and the U.S. is expected to follow suit.

Apple and Google announced their contact-tracing API last month. The system aims to help track where infected individuals have been and who they have come into contact with. That could potentially help slow the spread of coronavirus. This is the same idea as the NHS’s contact-tracing app.

Decentralized vs. centralized: The battle over contact-tracing apps

The difference comes down to the centralized vs. decentralized approaches to these apps. A centralized approach to contact-tracing, embraced by the NHS, means the anonymized proximity data about users is stored on a server controlled by an entity such as a healthcare service. The decentralized approach, favored by Apple and Google, means information is stored locally on individual devices. It could be uploaded after a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, but only with the user’s permission.

Countries like Germany have already come around to the idea of using Apple and Google’s decentralized approach to contact-tracing, after initially kicking against it.

The Daily Mail thinks that the NHS’s less private approach to contact-tracing could potentially make it illegal. Matthew Ryder, a Queen’s Counsel lawyer at Matrix Chambers in London, said that, “If Germany, the US and Italy can all do the job that we want to do with a decentralized system that Apple and Google have facilitated, which is the least interference of privacy, we need to understand why the UK thinks it can’t do the job and needs a different system.”

Problems with failure to adopt Apple and Google’s contact-tracing app

The creators of the NHSX app have previously disagreed with suggestions that their approach is inherently less privacy-centric. “This suggestion is completely wrong,” said an NHSX spokesperson. “Everyone is in agreement that user privacy is paramount, and while our app is not dependent on the changes they are making, we believe they will be helpful and complimentary.”

The potential travel issue comes down to the challenge of using different systems. The concern is that by using a different contact-tracing app to prove people’s health and travel, British citizens traveling overseas after lockdown could struggle to prove their status.

This could result in them being unnecessarily placed in quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in another country after lockdown is eased.

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