The European Union advocates a European tracking app, which should help start our lives after the corona crisis. The Dutch government also seems to embrace such an app. What can we expect from such an app?
The European Union advises the various Member States to develop a mobile app that can help to control the further spread of the virus while at the same time not affecting the privacy of citizens.
Several European governments have already launched an app with the help of telecom companies that anonymize the location data. The possibilities and functionalities of such apps will only increase in the coming weeks and months as governments seek active measures to control the virus outbreak and to look at ways to open up the economy again.
This is how the app may work
It is obvious that in the Netherlands there will be an app based on Bluetooth and not based on GPS or WiFi, which many other apps from, for example, Google or Facebook use. The idea of such a tracking app is that your phone makes short contact with other phones in the area, so that it can gain insight into how many people are in a certain place at any given time.
“If you later become infected with the coronavirus, everyone who was near you for a certain period of time will receive a message with that message,” says Bart Preneel, professor of cybersecurity at KU Leuven and co-developer of a privacy-friendly corona app in an interview with the Algemeen Dagblad. “It is anonymous, you will be notified that you have been around someone who has been infected for some time and that you have to contact the GGD, for example.”
Various municipalities are already working with a separate app, with which users can report symptoms of the virus. For example, there is free for everyone who lives in the province of Utrecht OLVG corona check app. In the app you enter various health data daily. A medical team from the UMC Utrecht analyzes your data, after which you will be contacted if necessary.
In this article you can read in detail how the app could work.
Privacy concerns
The tracking app can count on the necessary criticism. What about the security and privacy of users? Some fear that governments can use the data to monitor citizens.
Although the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) allows the use of anonymous data, the institute wants to address the concerns by pushing for a pan-European approach, ie one app for all of Europe.
“The EDPS is aware that several Member States are developing a variety of mobile applications that deal with personal data in different ways,” said EDPS CEO Wojciech Wiewiorowski in a letter to European governments. Wiewiorowski states that using temporary broadcast identifiers and bluetooth are safe ways to track citizens while protecting their privacy.
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