Claims from Amnesty International UK that the NHS’s coronavirus contact tracing app could “open the door to pervasive state surveillance” have been dismissed as “completely wrong” by Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
The organisation said the app’s centralised design, which allows some information to be stored centrally rather than on the device itself, means ministers “may be planning to route private data through a central database, opening the door to pervasive state surveillance and privacy infringement, with potentially discriminatory effects”.
“That’s completely wrong,” Hancock told the BBC. “Firstly because the data is stored on your phone until you need to get in contact with the NHS in order to get a test and secondly because the purposes of this are purely and simply to control the spread of the virus, which is really important.
“Thirdly because we’ve all had to give up significant infringements on our liberty, for instance with the social distancing measures and the lockdown, and we want to release those, and this approach will help us to release them… I can reassure you that it’s completely untrue.”
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