Currently, the NHS Test & Trace app is entirely confidential. When it pings to tell you to self-isolate, no-one else will ever know – including the NHS. Do you think that you should be able to opt-in, voluntarily, to allow the NHS to find out?
Well, it doesn’t matter what you think. Or, indeed, what the British Government thinks. For it was decided by Google and Apple, privately and without accountability to anyone, that privacy trumps utility and no Government globally would be able to use Apple or Google’s phone operating systems for contact tracing if they included even an option of providing data to public health authorities. As Google and Apple provide the operating systems for 100% of new mobile phones, that was that.
Today’s post looks at the consequences of public transport operators having handed their customer relationships to third parties, including Google.