Academics worry that apps that could be used for mass surveillance
The Financial Times reports on an open letter from 300 academics, warning that many apps currently being built to help trace the spread of coronavirus do not respect privacy, and will enable mass surveillance. Their concern is that centrally-held records could allow hacking or spying, and result in a ‘catastrophic erosion of public trust’. They urge that so-called ‘contact-tracing’ apps, which use location-based tools, should hold information on peoples’ phones, similar to the system designed by Google and Apple, and not on a central database.
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