Britain’s NHS shuns Apple and Google as it rolls out coronavirus contact-tracing app

The government app could soon be able to determine where people go and who they see. As a result, privacy campaigners have raised concerns about “mission creep” and Britain walking into a surveillance state.

To make matter’s worse, the NHS has shunned Apple and Google’s “decentralized” framework in favor of a “centralized” approach, meaning data is processed on a central database instead of on the smartphone itself.

While the Apple-Google model protects people’s privacy, it also limits how much data the authorities can see. If the NHS builds the app itself then it can access all the data and tweak the app as and when it sees fit.

The Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the U.K. data regulator, saidthat “as a general rule, a decentralized approach” would be more in line with its principles.

Orla Lynskey, a law professor at the London School of Economics, told the U.K. government’s human rights select committee on Monday: “There is an inherent risk that if you create a system that can be added to incrementally, you could do so in a way that is very privacy invasive.

But NHSX, the app’s designer and the digital arm of the NHS, argues that privacy has been built into the voluntary app.

To begin with, the only personal data stored by the app will be the first part of the user’s postcode. Users then have to opt-in if they wish to share additional location data.

“I can’t give you a definitive list of exactly who would have access to the data,” Matthew Gould, chief executive of NHSX, told Parliament on Monday.

“But what I can say is, we will have proper procedures in place consistent with law that will make sure that only those who have an appropriate public health reason for seeing the data do so, and they do so under very clear conditions and criteria.”

There are big concerns that the app simply won’t work as there is currently little evidence to show that contact-tracing apps are effective in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

The NHS solution could also be a power drain on people’s phones, especially on older devices with limited battery life. That’s because the app has to wake up in the background every time the phone recognizes another handset running the same app.

Oxford researchers found that contact-tracing apps will only work as they’re intended to if around half the total population use the app.

Gould admitted that there will “inevitably be unintended consequences” during the launch period.

Over 53 contact-tracing apps have already been rolled out in 29 countries, according to VPN provider Top10VPN. For 15 of them, it isn’t clear if they’re centralized or decentralized. Of the remainder, 20 are centralized compared to only eight that are decentralized.