health
UK’s New Pandemic Plan Would Turn Big Tech Into A Mass Location Tracking Network
UK's £1B pandemic strategy proposes UKHSA contact tracing system using big tech location data, targeting 2030 deployment.
TL;DR
- Britain's new £1 billion pandemic strategy treats future outbreaks as a certainty and plans a contact tracing system using real-time location data.
- The proposed system, to be run by UKHSA and deployed by 2030, will leverage AI and 'big tech' partnerships for rapid, large-scale detection.
- Concerns are raised about a potential surveillance architecture that tracks millions, with details on data sharing and post-pandemic data handling being vague.
- A 2021 report revealed UK government-funded researchers covertly tracked one in ten people via mobile phones for behavioral analysis without consent.
- The government's justification of 'anonymized,' 'cell tower level' data is criticized as a thin distinction that still allows for significant tracking and erodes public trust.
- Past attempts at a centralized contact tracing app failed due to privacy issues, with the original NHSX app being too invasive for Apple and Google.
- Critics argue the new strategy formalizes and enlists 'big tech' to build permanent government systems for population-level location surveillance, normalizing what was previously done covertly.