South Korea has earned international plaudits for containing the coronavirus since reporting its first case back in February. Once the largest outbreak outside of China, South Korea has now managed to flatten the curve without resorting to authoritarian measures and, in turn, has become a role model for others.
The praise that has been lavished upon South Korea has largely centred around its enormous virus testing programme. But, what hasn’t been so widely reported is the country’s heavy use of surveillance technology, notably closed-circuit television (CCTV) and the tracking of bank card and mobile phone usage, to identify who to test in the first place. Indeed, many of the countries lauding South Korea are the same countries that have been wary of implementing similar privacy-invading measures.
Public health authorities across the globe are increasingly pinning their hopes on coronavirus tracking apps, which, in theory, could allow governments to quickly identify and notify people who have come into contact with infected individuals. Those who have been exposed to the virus could then be tested and isolated, potentially breaking the chain of further transmission.
Right from the outset of the outbreak, South Korea created a public database of coronavirus cases that provides extraordinarily detailed information about infected individuals, including their exact movements. The database is updated continuously using information from payment card transactions, mobile phone signal data, and CCTV footage. This government database facilitated the development of apps such as Corona 100m, which maps infected individuals and provides information about their age, sex, and nationality. The Corona 100m app alerts users if they breach a 100-meter radius of the latest tracked whereabouts of the coronavirus patient. Since its launch, the app has been downloaded more than 1 million times.
Once collected, the data is used by health authorities to contact-trace and is then released to the public to minimize activity in virus hotspots. One scholar noted that sharing the tracking data is “an effective way for the authorities to gain public trust.” The idea is to let the public know, via a central website and regional text messages, if they may have crossed paths with carriers.
The tracking information is not only used by health authorities but also made public via national and local government websites and free smartphone apps that show the locations of infections, and provide text message updates about new local cases.
In addition, incoming travellers are required to report their symptoms daily on an app that they have to download upon arrival at the airport. Contact-tracing is strictly enforced upon travellers, possible contacts of positive cases, and quarantined people. If anyone breaks quarantine, South Korea mandatorily asks them to wear a tracking bracelet.
While this approach has yielded positive results and is ostensibly guided by motives of creating transparency and engendering public trust, others are concerned about the Big Brother connotations that such an extensive database carries, even if names are not made public. Consequently, the wide-ranging tracking initiative has raised questions about how to reconcile public health protection and privacy.
While anonymized, movement histories in some cases are sufficiently detailed for the public to probe into and discover patients’ identities. In some instances, Korean authorities have also revealed the names of specific stores. On the face of it, the ensuing business closures represent immediate and tangible financial losses to business owners. However, the stigma of being a virus hotspot may lead to long-term financial implications, even once the closure is lifted.
This “witch-hunt” has generated a widespread fear of stigmatisation: A recent survey by Seoul University revealed that South Koreans were more afraid of the “criticisms” they may suffer from becoming infected than the medical complications that arise from contracting the virus. A growing appetite for “outing” patients has also led to leaks of their private information–much of it speculative or false.
In the southern city of Busan, a coronavirus patient whose personal travel history was released filed an appeal about privacy violations to the National Human Rights Commission, the nation’s rights watchdog agency. The commission appeared to back the complaint. In a subsequent statement, it called the public disclosures of personal movements “beyond necessity”.
And although it is hard to imagine many democratic countries taking such a cavalier approach to patient privacy, the app seems to be popular in South Korea, with a Realmeter survey in March showing that 89.1 percent of the public supported the government’s tracking practices.
Closer to home, India’s Covid-19 contact tracing app, Aarogya Setu, has been downloaded 100 million times, according to the information technology ministry, despite fears over privacy. The app, which means “bridge to health” in Sanskrit, was launched just six weeks ago.
It has been criticised for not complying with data protection principles of data minimisation, purpose limitation, transparency and accountability, all of which are crucial to protecting the privacy of its users.
However, when compared with the Korean app and its supplementary tracing and tracking tools, it becomes clear that the Aarogya Setu’s surveillance capability is far more limited. Indeed, the differences in the state of surveillance in the two countries are worlds apart. While the absence of stringent data protection laws in India theoretically exposes its population to greater privacy risks, the infrastructural capabilities and policy decisions of the Korean government exposes the Korean population to a far greater degree of invasiveness in practice.
Using a phone’s Bluetooth and location data, Aarogya Setu lets users know if they have been near a person with Covid-19 by scanning a database of known cases of infection. While names and numbers are not made public, the app does collect this information, as well as one’s gender, travel history–just as in South Korea. Where the two apps differ, however, is that the South Korean app makes the entire travel history of the infected person available to the entire public, while the Indian app only notifies users if they enter an area where an infected person has visited.
Furthermore, South Korean authorities have suggested that the data of non-infected persons will be kept on the app until the pandemic is over. On the other hand, the data of non-infected persons is deleted from the Aarogya Setu app within 30 days, within 45 days in case of tests, and within 60 days if a person has undergone treatment.
Nevertheless, the absence of legislation around privacy continues to fuel mistrust and suspicion in India. In an attempt to address fears of mass surveillance, the Indian government announced that the storage of data for more than six months has been barred and specified that violators of this stipulation face jail time. In addition, unlike in South Korea, Indian authorities also provide for an option to individuals who seek deletion of their data from the record within 30 days of making such a request.
One area of similarity between the two countries is that Seoul has mandated the use of a smartphone tracking app for new airport arrivals, which was mirrored by Indian authorities when they mandated that train and air travellers to download the Aarogya Setu app. Nevertheless, criticisms of coercion saw the Ministry of Home Affairs said that the app was no longer ‘mandatory’.
A lot of these differences and the Indian government’s reluctance to extend its influence stem from the fact that South Korea has a much more crystallized surveillance infrastructure and culture. In 2014, South Korean cities had over 8 million CCTV cameras or one camera per 6.3 people. In 2010, everyone was captured an average of 83.1 times per day and every nine seconds while travelling. These figures are likely to be much higher today.
In addition, South Korea has the highest proportion of cashless transactions in the world. Simultaneously, South Korea has one of the world’s highest phone ownership rates. In fact, there are more phones than people. Using transaction history and citizens’ mobile phones, it is possible to accurately track one’s location and movements. In fact, phone locations are automatically recorded with complete accuracy because devices are connected to between one and three transceivers at any time. There are approximately 860,000 4G and 5G transceivers across the whole country. Moreover, phone companies require all customers to provide their real names and national registry numbers. In contrast, 36 percent of all Indian mobile phone users expected to own a smartphone by 2022, much lower than in South Korea.
Nevertheless, it must be said that the Indian government’s steadfast efforts to address privacy concerns must be met with some suspicion. The Aarogya Setu app’s source code still has not been made publicly available, which would provide information on the range of functions the app can perform and the extent of information that it can and does store. In light of these concerns, the government’s principal scientific advisor, Prof K Vijay Raghavan confirmed that the Aarogya Setu source code would be made public in the near future for anyone to test its functions.
That being said, it is pertinent to note that less than 13,000 users of Aarogya Setu have been found to be COVID-19 positive but, due to help of the app, around 1.4 lakh people who have come in close contact with infected persons were traced and alerted. This illustrates the utility of the app and may suggest that some priority concerns may have to be overlooked in order to ensure that India can contain the virus and move towards lifting lockdowns and restoring economic activity.
Ultimately, winning public trust holds the key to the successful implementation of contact-tracing apps with a centralized database. Access to population data allows for more sophisticated analysis and more effective disease control and containment. If one wishes to replicate the successes of South Korea’s coronavirus approach, then one must also acknowledge the many sacrifices that its population had to make in order to benefit from relinquishing some of their privacy. In highly collectivistic societies like China and South Korea desire for greater privacy has a lower threshold than in India, especially when there is an argument for greater public good. At a time when India’s lockdowns are being repeatedly extended and its case count is only increasing, its people must consider whether refusing to be subjected to additional surveillance and divulge personal information can be reconciled with their equal demands for disease control and prevention. At the same time, however, Indian authorities must work doubly hard to engender public trust in the efficacy and safety of such measures. In the absence of these two conditionalities, the level of surveillance and exposure of personal information that is seen in South Korea is unlikely to be accepted in India.
Image Source: Wired