Last night at the press conference on the coronavirus we heard it for the first time; an app that keeps track of who you’ve been in contact with recently. If someone you have recently been in contact with gets caught by the coronavirus, you can be notified quickly. Handy or unnecessary interference?
The Dutch are stubborn by nature. Although everyone calls themselves law-abiding, civil disobedience is in our DNA. There’s a sign saying “don’t walk on the grass” and we go for a picnic on the grass. Surely that’s up to us?! That’s why there was so much indignation on social media when Minister Hugo de Jonge of Public Health proposed the idea of an app. It could replace the GGD’s contact research.
Minister Hugo de Jonge (r) with sign interpreter Irma Sluis (l)
And while the majority of the Netherlands has Facebook on its phone and can easily be followed by a foreign party, many people don’t like it when the government could follow us. Could’ because details about the how and what are not yet known. The fact is that in many other countries such apps are already being used to curb the outbreak of the coronavirus. If someone is diagnosed with the virus, it is possible to quickly and reliably find out with whom he or she has had contact. He or she would then be able to put himself or herself in quarantine, thus reducing the risk of spreading the virus. A necessary step when we all want to get back to normal.
Elaboration
As said, details about the app are still missing. We do not yet know if the government will develop it themselves or if they have an existing app in mind. The technical elaboration is also still unclear. The word ‘Bluetooth’ was mentioned during the press conference. This technique works at a short distance and therefore seems ideal for the intended purpose. Collecting all this data seems like a potential privacy nightmare. Although data can be made anonymous, we know from practice that in many cases location data can be traced back to people.
Other countries
Apart from all these concerns, an app can certainly help to keep the coronavirus outbreak controlled and under control. And no matter how terrifying it all sounds, it could all be much worse. Other countries go much further. For example, countries such as the US, South Korea, Austria and even Belgium are using data from telecom providers to see if people are adhering to the lockdown. Israel goes a step further and recently passed a special law that allows the secret intelligence service to probe individual phones. This can even be done without a court order. Then an app you can install voluntarily already sounds a lot friendlier.