NHSX contact tracing app
On 12th April during the UK daily Pandemic Briefing Matt Hancock announced the introduction of a new App. He revealed that the UK Government is developing a Covid-19 contact tracing app through the National Health Service’s digital innovation branch NHSX.
NHSX, is working on an app that will help track the spread of Covid-19.
If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus, you can securely tell this new NHSX app, and the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you have been in contact with over the past few days, even before you had symptoms so that they know and can act accordingly.
How will the NHSX contact tracing app work?
Once installed the NHSX contact tracing app will use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals to keep track of handsets and crowdsource and relay data. It will detect when you are in significant contact with other individuals running the app via BLE to build up a traceable contact map.
No names will be given and all information will be anonymised with every user having a randomised ID – although the first part of a user’s postcode will need to be input into the app when you start using it.
The mobile app will work by letting users self-report if they are experiencing symptoms of the virus. Doing so will then notify other users if they have been in significant contact with an infected user and provide the latest advice from the NHS, with all data heading into a centralised data server in the UK. From this server, notifications are then sent out to those IDs that you have been in contact with.
If a user tests positive for Covid-19 it will trigger an alert to others that they were exposed who may need to quarantine. For those who need testing, the app will then provide a route into getting a test from the NHS
The science behind transmission will guide the app’s response so as more is learnt from the conditions under which coronavirus is transmitted, the app will adapt so that it is more accurate in alerting those people who have come into contact with an infected person.
Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX speaking at the Common’s Science & Technology Committee on 29th April stated “It would be very useful, epidemiologically, if people were willing to offer us not just the anonymous proximity contacts but also the location of where those contacts took place – because that would allow us to know that certain places or certain sectors or whatever were a particular source of proximity contacts that subsequently became problematic”.
Will the NHSX contact tracing app be safe to use?
Matt Hancock addressed privacy concerns over the tracing app, explaining it will be completely voluntary to use and the data will not be kept any longer than necessary. He stated the NSHX have also been consulting with experts from NCSC to ensure privacy and security.
At every stage data protection impact assessments will be undertaken, at every stage the Information Commission will be notified of the results.
The app has however, triggered privacy concerns, because it will be asked to willingly share information about those contacts that the NHS will be able to access. This will create a social graph and even though users will be anonymised privacy advocates are concerned that this will become a form of state control, because it’s a centralised system. There are also issues of concern around hacking of centralised servers.
The NHSX thinks that more than 60% of the population needs to use the app to make it effective.
The data team at Oxford – advising the NHSX team – has not included the over 70s in that group, as it is assumed they will be shielding at home when lockdown restrictions start to lift. Singapore trialled a similar system, the uptake was only 12% but in Australia they saw 2m install the app within days.
The problem they state is getting high numbers of people to use any app, especially as it is going to be voluntary to use.
When will the app be available?
It is currently at the development and testing stage being trialled in the Isle of Wight. Matt Hancock stated this was a perfect testing ground for the system because it is isolated, has 1 authority and 1 NHS Trust and fairly low levels of coronavirus currently. This doesn’t make any difference to lockdown measures at this time on the Isle of Wight.
The app has been approved on both Apple AppStore and Android’s Google Play, the roll-out date is likely to be from the middle of May – although it has been stressed that using the app will not signal the end of lockdown, it will just be one of the measures that the Government has in place.
https://www.pocket-lint.com/apps/news/151807-how-the-nhs-coronavirus-contact-tracing-app-will-work
Contact Tracers
Countries will also seek to recruit tens of thousands of ‘contact tracers’ and now that Professor Neil Ferguson/the World Health Organisation’s lockdown strategy has caused massive unemployment desperation for work will make finding recruits easy.
See how this works?
First you destroy people’s lives, then you print trillions in funny money to bail out the inept and continue paying the enforcers, ensuring they are fed. And then when desperation reaches its peak you create a new government program and turn people into snitches to ensure compliance.
As always with any totalitarian state you have to herd your citizens towards a terrible idea but first they have to come up with a harmless sounding euphemism for it to make it more palatable.
All this for a disease which has a mortality rate similar to the annual flu.
Breach of Human Rights
Human Rights Watch have stated there are serious questions as to whether the use of Covid-19 tracking initiatives can meet the international human rights standards of necessity and proportionality.
There are currently reports that 24 countries are undertaking telecommunications location tracking and 14 countries are using applications for contact tracing or quarantine enforcement.
China and Russia are expanding their surveillance capabilities and restricting rights in ways that are not justified on public health grounds to counter the spread of COVID-19 .
Analysis
World Health Organisation Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that any country wanting to end their lockdown must ‘find every trace and quarantine every contact’.
It is very concerning that the World Health Organisation appears to be advocating the strategy of Communist China with mass surveillance and quarantine enforcement and even more concerning that so many Governments including the British are seemingly willing participants – toeing the globalists line.
The irony should not be lost on us that a virus emanating from China could infect the West with the Chinese Communist Party’s style of Governance if we let it – WE MUST NOT!.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/02/governments-should-respect-rights-covid-19-surveillance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=603&v=0IDURYmdGeg&feature=emb_title
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FizHg_2hrVQ
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I wrote my first article for Unity News Network on 30th December 2019, and I have been writing ever since – my library is now well in excess of 200 articles.
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