On 2 April 2020, about 100 human rights and civil liberties organisations, including Amnesty International, issued a joint statement calling for responsible use of digital surveillance to fight the Covid-19 pandemic and warning that ‘states’ efforts to contain the virus must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance.’ The involvement of the Big Tech monopolies and shadowy surveillance companies in the development of Britain’s new contact tracing app (‘NHS COVID-19 App’) tells us clearly that the British state is indifferent to Amnesty’s call. Adam Turing and Anthony Rupert report.
Contact tracing
Contact tracing apps can clearly play a major role in arresting the spread of infectious diseases including Covid-19. In China, the wide use of the ‘close contact detector’ app has allowed the safe return of people to public spaces. In South Korea, the government has delved into credit card transactions, smartphone location data and CCTV video to create a tracking system. This data was used to develop apps that inform users whether they had been near a carrier. By March 2020 the South Korean government had launched an enhanced tool that they say is able to track patients in near real time.
The Cuban University of Computer Sciences has launched a multiplatform application as part of the overall framework to tackle Covid-19. This app relies on citizens voluntarily undertaking a survey to assess risk of infection and potential symptoms. 86 people were taken to isolation centres and three to hospitals during the first three days after the app’s launch. 70,000 Cubans were using the tracking app one week after its launch. In Cuba’s socialist system, the technology can be used as part of a comprehensive health response, with the sole aim of arresting the spread of Covid-19. The same cannot be said of contact tracing apps in Britain, whose design and management rely on private tech monopolies interested in mining data for profit and with a sordid history of collaborating with the state ‘security’ apparatus.
Britain’s application
The app currently being trialled in Britain – ‘NHS COVID-19 App’ – enables the Bluetooth connection in a user’s phone to measure proximity to other people with the app. If a person starts feeling ill, the user can tell the app to request a home test. If it comes back positive for Covid-19, then an instant signal will be sent to everyone they had been in contact with who also has the app. In addition, the subject’s workplace and their transport providers could be told to carry out a decontamination clean.
NHSX, the health service’s new technology arm, published the source code for the app in May. Notably there have already been criticisms levied against the developers for claiming users will be anonymous. While the Bluetooth logging system in the NHS app does not collect location information, it does create an identifier (known as InstallationID) for every phone that uses the app. In a recent paper, Michael Veale of University College London claims the data collected could be de-anonymized and traced back to an individual.
Who will manage the data?
To process the ‘anonymised’ data NHSX has partnered with surveillance and data analysis firm Palantir. Palantir was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, the reactionary billionaire founder of PayPal, and is best known for supporting the CIA’s counterinsurgency and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2011 it was implicated in an extensive plot to target activists, reporters, labour unions and political organisations on behalf of the lawyers of the US Chamber of Commerce and later Bank of America. Palantir has contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is used for surveillance and mass raids.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft (the world’s 13th, 37th and 60th largest companies) have also been awarded contracts involved in the infrastructure and collection of NHSX data. The smartphone market, on which the app relies, is almost totally dominated by two monopolies: Google and Apple. The two companies combined are estimated to have around 99% global market share. Apple is, according to Fortune magazine, the world’s eleventh largest company with assets of $365.7bn. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is the world’s 37th largest company with assets of $232.8bn. With market share like this, no contact tracing app could possibly work without the collaboration of these two companies.
These vast concentrations of wealth and market power have translated into a growing fusion of the tech companies and their leading figures with state power. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports (7 May 2020) that:
some 40 tech companies were present at a meeting with No 10 advisor Dominic Cummings in Downing Street on 12 March. Among their ranks were said to be several who have got the Covid-related health contracts, as well as the AI start-up Babylon Health. The Bureau previously revealed Cummings had done some consultancy work for Babylon the year before he came into government, and Matt Hancock has recently been an enthusiast for Babylon’s GP at Hand app.
Also involved in the rollout of the NHS app is Faculty AI – a company currently under investigation for a conflict of interest as their CEO’s brother, Ben Warner, attends Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). Lord Agnew, the Treasury and Cabinet Office Minister responsible for Government Digital Service, under which the NHS contracts were seemingly awarded, also has a significant shareholding in Faculty AI.
What is to be done?
Effective contact tracing is essential for fighting the pandemic. Smartphone apps may even play a key role. If left in the hands of the tech monopolies, however, their rollout risks the wholesale transfer of personal data to Apple, Google, Palantir and the British state. If we want a world where technology can be put to use solving the problems of humanity, and not to reinforce the wealth and power of a parasitic ruling class, then we must fight to take the power out of the hands of the monopolies. We must fight for socialism.
