Don’t get me wrong here. This is a serious issue and one that would benefit from the application of technology to help the mammoth effort of track and trace required to fight the pandemic. But if we have managed to mobilize the amount of resources we have so far in the response to this, surely we can also mobilize the necessary skills, both technical and policy, to ensure that whatever tracking system we create has the safeguards necessary to protect the rights and privacy of the citizen.
We have the potential capability to deploy a mechanism that would make this crisis and any future ones like it easier to manage and save lives. But this doesn’t mean that we need to create something that has far reaching consequences after the crisis is over.
Like all good applications should be, design the necessary security and privacy safeguards in now, rather than later when it is a problem.
#privacy #infosec #security