Aljazeera bringing you the needs and Current Affairs that matter to you. Aljazeera. Can i am support coronavirus in check with countries rush to introduce the tools to track the spread of the pandemic but how effective are they do they danger of a human rights this is inside story with. Hello and welcome to the show im sam is a than Health Officials in Tech Companies around the world have been racing to develop smartphone apps to control the spread of corona virus some governments maybe weighing Rights Violations and massive violence but others have adopted the Technology Singapore is one of the 1st countries to launch a nonmandatory Contact Tracing app using bluetooth signals australia malaysia and the u. K. Have followed suit there have also been apps that go beyond Contact Tracing notably in china where a system is being built to collect Peoples Health author and travel history india and south korea launch similar apps members of the European Parliament discuss the pros and cons of tracing apps in a recent debate the european Justice Commissioner says the technology should only be used during the pandemic. The personal data should not be kept for longer than necessary timelines should be based on medical relevance in addition the apps should be only used during the crisis and the day activity at the latest when the pandemic is of the day activision should not depend on the installation by the use lets take a closer look at how these tracing apps work then south korea created a public database of covert 900 cases that gives details of everyone whos been infected the system tracks their exact movements and updates from Card Transactions phone signal data and c. C. T. V. Footage singapores app is more limited and only 25 percent of the population is actually signed up when a person tests positive Health Authorities can see their bluetooth history and order those theyve had contact with to quarantine the u. K. Is trialing a test track and Trace Program on the isle of wight like singapore it uses bluetooth to detect when a persons phone has been near another own by someone reporting symptoms of covert 19 and cattle has an app linking uses to a Health Ministry database it assigns q. R. Codes to differentiate between suspected confirmed and quarantine cases. Well lets bring in our panel joining us from doha is dr patrick tang hes the division chief of Pathology Sciences that said there medicine from london sastry senior lecturer in the department of informatics at Kings College london and from rotterdam alan phatic a behavioral psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at help Business School could have you all with us can start with dr patrick so to what extent have mobile phone tracking apps actually proved effective so far and helping to contain covert 19 well i think theres a lot of promise for different how status apps and tracking apps were harder to picture. That night out rate right now theres a few countries around the world that have started to use the types of apps to track their occupation and monitor their house status and theres many other countries are considering adopting this technology and theres Many Companies either companies are also trying to develop apps for this purpose as well to alec can people be motivated to carry their mobile phones of all time make sure that the batteries always charged in the bluetooth this switched on that seems like the effectiveness of these apps depends on a lot of things related to Human Behavior. Well i think weve you know i think human devices has become so integral to our lives we spend numerous hours a day for work and also for our private lives using mobile devices to communicate and to be informed about stuff so yes we we have become very much a custom to using mobile devices and how it basically also affects behavior. Depends on that you know this is what we what i basically call the human to digital interaction you know still not much is known of how the digital device affects Human Behavior but its because its become so integrity in our lives and it definitely is having an effect on Human Behavior and also be because of how devices might be used or the content thats provided our interaction with this has a huge impact on how people decide or even behave in that matter of fact and this shant we should make it clear that not all of these apps are the same and some of the basic parameters and definitions for example in the singapore trace together app well it considers contact with an infected person to be if youve been within 2 meters of someone who is infected for 30 minutes but if you look at another app the Australian App well they define it as being in the proximity is 1. 5 meters for 15 minutes right so there is a big variation in parameters here correct. Yes indeed so most of these apps if not all of them rely on our loot policy. And bluetooth is basically a very straightforward sort of protocol which can do the car other devises close to you with a range of up to 10 meters and it can also go through one so it doesnt necessarily mean if you if your lets say our lab then yes you see some other bluetooth d devices that you are our. Other person because it might just be that youre under rocks so theres issues about our whether it is completely and that if the cards are of the actual contact you know. And furthermore there might be a mission as the previous speaker said about roe you know if if somebody has gotten one of them are if this individual is not to use it so theres a number of apps which will determine. If we are honest. Specially on the point you mention there could be a wall or a floor between you and the other person that the app doesnt see because its just connecting bluetooth so dr patrick overall higher how scientific are some of these parameters if you cant see through a wall or you know if the parameter is being set differently between countries that are using this technology i mean current virus i soon behaves the same way in australia as it doesnt singapore. Well thats an excellent question and theres no perfect answer for that so none of these apps are going to be perfect and what theyre going to cheat is Risk Reduction so is there a scientific matters how arrive for example in australia that they look at 1. 5 meters as the sort of critical distance and in singapore theyve defined it is 2 meters is there any kind of scientific basis for that that you know off so you know its its not an exact measure where theres one meter or one in the half meters or 2 meters its that it is not that if youre exactly right you meters that way have 0 risk and one meter has 100 percent risk so its a gradient and it depends on the epidemiology within that country and there modeling of what they feel their jurisdiction is the most appropriate measure for having the Risk Reduction that they need to control the outbreak in their region so its not going to be the one solution these apps are not going to be able to control the outbreak find themselves we still need to do hand washing we still need math we still need to do some degree of social distancing and quarantine and isolation and and testing you have to do lots of testing thats fuck you so if apps are part of the solution theyre not going and by themselves all right so i guess the same thing applies to the number of minutes of exposure to an infected person right whether its 15 or 30 minutes this is well i dont want to be basically talking about guess all ag. Here. Yes those are all you know different measures in terms of what she bubble in that whats realistic in that jurisdiction in that region and will that achieve the Risk Reduction that they need to control the outbreak so i think in every country theyve looked at all their numbers in the decided that 1. 5 meters might be good for them and others might say 15 minutes is good for them. But thats based on their own modeling of their population and the 8 years of their people in their population. On that point of behaviors of their people lets bring allie and since you are a behavioral psychologist to what extent does but do behavioral factors really make a difference when the operation of these kinds of apps lie in other words i thought if hes sitting and sitting down and thinking ok my i have a population that generally will wear masks and gloves properly or not in deciding how i set these parameters. Absolutely look i think 1st of all behavioral is behavioral design is fundamental to any kind of act as i because when we think of apps we think of it is purely a digital something but there is a lot of behavior that goes into the actual design of things when we look at now for example tracking devices i think the general response so far has been well we do not want to be tracked and the reason has to do with the fact that peoples you know personal freedom has been limited for example already due to the pandemic the lockdown the curfews you know social distancing and now a tracking device to kind of track you as well would feel to a lot of people that they their personal freedom is further being kind of imposed on however i have to mention here that we use social media apps on a daily basis some of us even 7000 hours a day and what people are not conscious of is the fact that theres so much data already be given are being collected through these different apps of personal data who we d engage with d what we buy what we do and this information is actually being used to repurpose it back into us that have is by products and other stuff so i think what we definitely need to be conscious of is the fact that theres already many apps out there that are actually using our data. And were voluntarily doing so because were enjoying the app so much but when it comes to the tracking device we feel that were being tracked and therefore all of a sudden we say no to that and i really think in this purpose what we design lets say these apps the purpose of the app is needs to be made clear so if the at the previous judgments just mentioned if this app is being used to help us to be notified and informed and to make better decisions for ourselves then i think people will be more acceptable to using these kinds of apps to help us make better decisions for ourselves or i will get more later into the question of privacy with these apps but if i can come back to the question of how paramus is being so. In these at the shant i wonder whether youre seeing any evidence of governments or authorities setting the premises based not on what they think. Is simply. Effective in terms of tracking the spread of virus but also in terms of how many cases they can track and have the resources to track because explain this to our viewers but basically if you set the parameters too wide you can end up having to track down half the country right and if you set them too narrow it can become pointless because youve got so many few cases right exactly so imagine youre actually youve got a number of points on it and there are being sprayed randomly with this like now what youre intending to get out is. A minute. Away and one way to do that would be to test every single point of each point representing once it is and. If it is the case that most of them are athletes. And the only way to do that is through testing to proper testing of every division in your country and thats very good what youre doing here. And its very difficult its a lot more expensive. Than the approaches that are considering here with these proximity facing or contact this. And the i dont know here is that with with you i know that i have been that if they can trace back their abbey in the past ideas because thats known could be. The number of days that up is speaking of the. Combat night get in fact at the when. I know that ive been back there are symptoms but if i go back 5 days who was i in contact with and back and chase them on then we can tell them to self isolate and they will then not spare the application so that is settled point here his proximity placing a practicing application does not actually protect you if it notifies that somebody in your vicinity has actually been in that youve already been exposed to the virus and therefore you will not be saved but what will actually happen is that you if you are being careful if youre distancing yourself staying within your home you will not then further impact other people and this is critical part of the stage that the virus is is today. In number slightly more than or slightly less than one so what we want to do is to bring that are that number less than one and the more he can do to prevent every secondary infection from happening the better we will be as a society so this is not something that i would deploy just because i want to selfishly save myself but expand the resolution which which will protect the society generally most of us that are at ups station and so thats thats i think that he be a real ask that as well as that its something which i am having to do a lot of truest italy and and this other state approach of lets install this up the nation that. Governments want us to start never mind a. Huge societal issue then perhaps it can have on our civilization. Ok but it doesnt do anything to me getting into the issues of privacy but before we make that shift dr patrick i want to ask you know michelle made it clear that its helpful and youve made that point is it helpful though with the majority of cases of transmission how we understand this virus transmit corrects and correct me if im wrong but most cases are they not transmitting through things like being at the time of when somebody actually coughs or sneezes around that person or contact with an infected surface to situations which the app doesnt really help that much with right because you could be close to someone for a few seconds and the app wouldnt really see that as within the parameters of your 15 or 30 minutes or you could be in touch with an infected surface where theres nobody elses bluetooth is on and around you. Well i think its a little bit more complicated than that its not just gaming of around someone thats caught for like one second its a probabilistic event so it just being close to someone thats caught it doesnt mean that you have a 100 percent chance of acquiring dated action theres definitely many different parameters and variables that you have to take into account to assess your real risk so so definitely amount of time you spend with someone thats in fact it is going to increase your risk but but as youve sat there you cannot reduce that risk to 0 because you might have yes the and that he passed by some of that cost right at the right time and in jail and not of that virus and to become infected so so these apps wont for exactly 100 percent but the absolute. Last weaker and what he was saying is that there can be some individual benefit as well excuse so if we look at some of the more primitive versions of this like during sars if you opt in to beat tracks then and the individual benefit that was going to be given back to you is that if you walked near a field they marry within a kilometer of the building where there was a large outbreak and then your phone would then notified by s. M. S. And then in 2003 that you were in an area that had a lot of sars so the same kind of thing could also work for some of these apps that if you were entering a neighborhood or building or a place where there was an outbreak it could also warn us about you so there could be sound individual benefit but definitely its correct that you know the most benefit of these that would be for the society in general more of an altruistic thing rather than individual bennett right brian lets talk a little bit about some of those concerns when it comes to why the society alley all we had a situation where theres been a shift in the thinking amongst many people a list a more compliant. Population now asking to be monitored because theyre wired about their lives well there is a shift absolutely so there will be different again theres differences in how people respond to a tracking device some people really really care about their their personal health and the of course of those of their loved ones and they see the absolute benefit in having such devices but remember one thing the purpose of how the device is being used and how its tracking you what kind of information is being used and collected from you and what will happen without that with that information later will play a huge role in how the rest of the population accept these kind of tracking devices because i think we have a lot of memories of the past and how for example you know information has been used or how if a mission is currently being used for other purposes than just for the purpose of the current app and i think thats why its really important to get that message clear to the public but also in the designs of transparency and trust is so important for those people who kind a few of the ok if i could jump in this one if you try you there you said that transparency and trust in the design the shant anything that you know about the designs of this of these apps so far that prevents them from being used misused showy say you know to prevent or limit and then to fear some human rights organizations are saying they could be used to to do things like prevent freedom of movement and association for political reasons. This is a yes this is and its basically equivalent to some of these prisoners who are sometimes that out but with a little tag to them and the time and the place they incendiary. Analogy to use but thats the sort of power that for actually. Come from these applications now so this is exactly the reason why many governments are highly charged up such and there should be a good amount of oversight to make sure that the data that has been collected is not being misused or any other source or there are a couple of different ways to do this one is more a centralized approach where all of the data is collected and kept and one alive. This can make certain processing more easy d or somewhat more scalable d as well but it does lead to possible compromises may not necessarily get the government that misuse it is that that server where the data is getting store may get compromised with our government even knowing that i so thats thats. The 2nd way in which people are dealing with this is a decentralized approach in the real. I think a level. Discussion thats happening is whether the centralized our decentralized approach is the proper one favors privacy more one for better. Leshin ok let me let me bring in dr patrick was there is quite a variation between these apps if you look at the south korean up for example it does long locations a lot more than the singaporean map from a medical containment perspective dr patrick how important is it to have a lot of dance along the bout locations not just you know whether or not youve been close to somebody that could be infected but to have the locations of all the locations that youve been to. All of. That is collected whether its location data or oximeter other people that might be affected are important in certain circumstances so you know you support all the sound money and model would you and say we need apps that love absolutely as much as possible well if the data is used properly then that is how all data is helpful and because it takes a lot of time to gather that type of data that if you had humans going and calling people and having these individuals have to recall the places that they actually went to so if there was a way to access the data or only when necessary with a private individuals then that would be useful ok i think weve got time for one quick question allie any guarantees that this data will be used beyond the pandemic when its over i mean looking at the behavior of governments in the past once they say they get powers they seldom give them up right. Well you know i think its a great question and again we can take learning from how data is currently being used or how it has been used in the past a look at that read the terms and conditions of many apps and there it already says that you know that your data can be used to be sold to marketing agencies or maybe even use to for Law Enforcement in terms of National Security so we just completely agree without reading those terms that we usually exactly yeah yeah exactly and because often these terms and conditions are bigger than 100 page document in some cases you know people just dont want to read it they discretely want to kind of press ok and go along with it but i do think we need to be conscious of how this data is being used and for the people who are developing these apps they need to be very transparent and especially when were you know using for tracking purposes that maybe there should be a limitation or and so when the data is being used all right so good to have that discussion with all of you thank you so much as thank contests they shant allie and dr patrick and thank you for watching you can see the show again any time by visiting our website al jazeera dot com for the discussion head over to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash a day inside story and join the conversation on twitter handle is at a. 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Enough but a new dilemma after the death of the man at the center of the palestinian struggle now more than 40 years after to stablish mint how far has the p. L. O. Come to achieving its hopes and dreams concluding the turbulent story of the struggle for a palestinian homeland chiarello history of a revolution on aljazeera. Examining the impact of todays headlines extraordinary times require extraordinary measures but these should not be at the expense of our privacy setting the agenda for tomorrows discussions on nodal life that was in these walls and now there is no live in the wall global experts in discussion in this democracy why are people not voting International Filmmakers and world class journalists. On just their. China and says that as the pandemic under control carrying out the ambitious task of testing millions and the outbreaks epicenter. 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