"As more governments turn to contact tracing apps to aid in their efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, cybersecurity experts are warning this may spark renewed interest in Bluetooth attacks. They urge developers to ensure such apps are regularly tested for vulnerabilities and release patches swiftly to plug potential holes, while governments should provide assurance that their databases are secure and the data collected will not be used for purposes other than as originally intended. "
"Hu Xijin, a former editor of the ruling Communist Party's Global Times newspaper, warned that the use of the health code for purposes other than epidemic control "damages the authority" of the monitoring system and would chip away at the public's support for it. His post on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, on Monday became a hashtag that was among the most-searched earlier this week, drawing 280 million views."
"There are clear indications that the UK government is now actively considering use of the technology as a way of easing the lockdown. If this signals an outbreak in Whitehall of tech "solutionism" - the belief that for every problem there is a technological answer - then we should be concerned. Tech solutions often do as much harm as good, for example, by increasing social exclusion, lacking accountability and failing to make real inroads into the problem they are supposedly addressing."
"But an analysis of the app's code found that it does more than decide in real time whether someone poses a contagion risk; it also shares information with the police, setting "a template for new forms of automated social control that could persist long after the epidemic subsides"."
"Others are more emphatic about the future. Wang Aizhong, an activist based in Guangzhou, said: "This epidemic undoubtedly provides more reason for the government to surveil the public. I don't think authorities will rule out keeping this up after the outbreak.""
"At a time when science fiction and reality feel as if they are collapsing in on each other, we must resist the temptations of Big Brother; we would just be trading one kind of lockdown for another."
"The company, Unacast, went live with its Social Distancing Scoreboard Tuesday. The dashboard, billed as a public health utility, includes a county-by-county breakdown of people's movement patterns. It assigns each county a grade, which Unacast based (at least in part) on how much people are traveling. "