A group of nearly 175 UK academics has criticised the NHS’s planned COVID-19 contact-tracing app for a design choice they say could endanger users by creating a centralised store of sensitive health and travel data about them.
In the open letter published this afternoon, the 173 scholars called on NHSX, the state-run health service’s app-developing and digital policy quango, to “publicly commit that there will not be a database or databases, regardless of what controls are put in place, that would allow de-anonymization of users of its system.”
Due for release in the coming weeks, NHSX’s contact-tracing app will be the official way that everyone’s contacts with COVID-19-positive people will be tracked.
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Source: The Register
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