Let’s hope privacy promises aren’t all talk talk…
Imagine you’re the UK Government in the middle of the biggest crisis the country has faced since World War II.
Imagine that more than 30,000 people in the UK have died after testing positive for coronavirus – the only outranking the UK in its death toll is the United States, with a much much larger population.
Imagine that over half the population believes that you, the UK government, took too long – compared to our European neighbours – to impose a lockdown.
Imagine that you have decided, like other countries, to develop a smartphone app that might help quickly trace recent contacts of anyone with the coronavirus. But, unlike many other countries, you are trialling a “centralised” model app, which requires the potentially sensitive data on a central computer server rather than the alternative, “decentralised” model proposed by Apple and Google, where information stays on people’s handsets.
Obviously calming people’s understandable privacy and security concerns about such an app is going to be an important factor to increase chances that a decent proportion of the public will download it.
So, who does the UK government appoint to head up the NHS COVID-19 tracing app?
None other than Baroness Harding of Winscombe. Perhaps better known to you and me as Dido Harding, the former CEO of TalkTalk.
Dido Harding, you may recall, was for a couple of weeks in 2015 a regular fixture on UK news reports as she attempted to answer techni ..
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