An unusual row has cropped up over the design of smartphone apps to trace people in Europe at risk of coronavirus infection, potentially hindering efforts to curb the pandemic and ease crippling travel restrictions.

Scientists and researchers from more than 25 countries published an open letter urging governments not to abuse such technology to spy on their people and warning of risks in an approach championed by Germany.

“We are concerned that some ‘solutions’ to the crisis may, via mission creep, result in systems which would allow unprecedented surveillance of society at large,” said the letter that gathered more than 300 signatures.

Tech experts are rushing to develop digital methods to fight COVID-19. Automating the assessment of who is at risk and telling them to see a doctor, get tested or self-isolate, is seen by advocates as a way to speed up a task that typically entails phone calls and house calls.

Contact tracing apps are already in use in Asia, but copying their approach by using location data to would violate Europe’s privacy laws. Instead, Bluetooth chatter between devices is seen as a better way to measure person-to-person contacts.

The apps should be voluntary, and would need to be downloaded by at least 60% of the population to achieve the so-called “digital herd immunity” needed to suppress COVID-19, say researchers from Oxford University’s Big Data Institute.

Yet controversy over the best way forward could delay the rollout of apps to help governments, once they have brought the pandemic under control, to contain any new outbreaks.

Among the signatories was Michael Backes, head of Germany’s CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, which pulled out of PEPP-PT at the weekend. Swiss researchers have also publicly dissociated themselves from PEPP-PT, citing concerns over centralisation and privacy.

Critics have also questioned PEPP-PT’s assertion that seven European countries - Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Malta, Spain and Switzerland - had come on board. Spain and Switzerland now back rival DP-3T, government and research sources said. PEPP-PT said it was committed to guaranteeing the privacy of users and data protection at all times.

Source- Reuters