This week, the UK government was given the green light to collect mobile data of British citizens to try and bring a halt to the spread of the coronavirus. While many may see this as a breach of privacy, the independent privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) have granted permission for this to go ahead.
Initially, the government had enquired about leveraging the data from mobile phones to observe and track that the public were adhering to the social distancing recommendation, in a bid to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
However, privacy advocates have been swift in voicing their anger regarding the steps the government are taking, stating that more transparency and explanation was required so that public trust wasn’t damaged especially with the network providers.
It has been reported that BT and O2 have held talks about handing over required data for a project designed to observe trends in public movements but they have declared that any data given will not be used to track individuals and there is no plans for this in the future.
Other nations have taken this drastic measure to monitor COVID-19 contact tracing with Israel being the latest to do so. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, passed an emergency law which bypassed parliamentary approval, that allowed the use of mobile data to track those infected with coronavirus in a bid to locate and quarantine them.
Whether the U.K. government will be forced in following such a procedure, only time will tell.
The following cybersecurity professionals have had their say on the matter:
Jonathan Deveaux, Head of Strategic Partnerships – Enterprise Data Protec ..
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