Universal ID# with scan code

WOW, ..... I did not think there were any real, Pollyanna style idealists left. I am a big believer in the essential goodness of people and usually extend that to Governments as a first assumption but the simple truth is that Power corrupts. Having a database that identifies individuals and stores records of their physical movements is enormous Power over both those individuals and the community as a whole. One does not have to be a paranoid to be aware of the kinds of negative uses that would tempt even those with legal access; much less those who would wish to gain illegal access to this data. The actions of every Government in the world that considers individual liberties a positive right should be witness enough to how bad an idea this is. The particular case of the British Track and Trace App shows how taking these issues for granted can cripple a project. That all said, the Apple/Google initiative was SPECIFICALLY designed to allow Apps to be developed that would accomplish the desired Track and Trace objectives WITHOUT allowing personal identification of users or linking them to location data. The Brits chose to do otherwise; creating a database and ostensibly putting it into the secure hands only of the much trusted NHS. They still cant get people to use it. These apps need a critical-mass of people to buy in in order to be effective at controlling community spread. The Brits wont get that buy-in and the project will fail. We have the option to do things differently. We NEED to do things differently. This need is especially critical if we are to allow Visitors to return. Even with testing the simple fact is that some infectious visitors will end up contacting Bermudians. A well designed phone App would notify person A that they had recently been in contact with person B as soon as B's test came back positive. Person A would never know person B's name. No-one would ever be able to connect Person A and Person B using the data in the App or in either user's phone. The critical thing is that anyone who person B subsequently contacted while they were infectious would also be notified. Imagine a visitor who is infectious goes to horseshoe bay and meets a local and they talk for 10 minutes before they go on their separate ways. The local then sees a friend and they decide to have lunch. After lunch they meet up with another friend and hang out for a swim and so on. The visitor is tested two days later and found to be shedding the virus. Within moments of entering that fact into the visitor's phone app ALL of the people in that chain of transmission will be notified by their phones that they had contact with an infectious person and should get tested. The idea that human contact tracers could reliably identify the first local and their friend and their friend's friend and so on in interviews that probably would not happen for another two days or so when the tracers would not be permitted to identify any of the people involved is simply not credible. Studies have shown that the key to maintaining suppression is that contact tracing must be FAST and every contact must be found and tested. With all the will in the world this is not something that humans - even good ones and even lots of them - can do as well as the phones in our pockets. For the Visitors, running the app must be MANDATORY if they wish to avoid quarantine. For locals in the Tourism industry it is a life-saver so compulsion should not be necessary. For both however the assurance that no other user will be able to access their name or contact history will encourage them to engage without any security concerns. I have not heard this debate aired by Government but I do hope they do not make the British mistake or try to do this all by hand at great expense and great risk to Bermudians.

Generally a sound concept, but I would fear abuse of this tech and a continuation of its use well into the future. I believe Apple and Google are working to create a system-level tracking capability that allows your phone to alert you if you've been near someone recently that the local health officials have tested positive. This gives somewhat more control to each person, and simplifies the infrastructure to just an iPhone or Android.