New App Is Being Built To Track Close Contacts Of COVID-19 Patients

According to Business Insider, 10 other countries have started tracking phone data at various degrees of invasiveness, including South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Austria, Poland, Belgium, Germany, and Italy.

While Singapore’s app is being offered voluntarily, some governments have gone a step further to enforce their technological surveillance – South Korea is providing a publicly available map of COVID-19 patients for its citizens to track while Poland is making people send selfies to prove they are in home quarantine, or warrant a police visit if they do not reply in 20 minutes.

However, a data science expert, Mahendhiran Sanggaran Nair of Monash University, told New Straits Times that the launch of this application should not concern Malaysians who are worried about privacy infringements, as long as it is strictly regulated.

“I think (it’s important) to educate the public on how data is being used and also have a regulatory framework about who can see this and who can use it.”