NHS Contact Tracing (U.K.)
The U.K. was another country that infamously chose to go its own way, again with the idea that it would be creating its own centralized government database, but the government wanted to go one notch further and actually keep track of users’ GPS locations as well.
The country’s National Health Service (NHS) suggested that it had figured out a way to make its app work “sufficiently well” on the iPhone without users needing to keep it active and on-screen, thanks to cybersecurity experts from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K. equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
The U.K. approach, however, has raised concerns among privacy advocates, and as The Register has pointed out, could even violate the country’s own laws that prohibit tracking and recording all of the movements of its own citizens. Due to technical challenges and the furor from politicians and rights groups, The Guardian reports that the NHS has now been considering ditching its original plan and using the Apple-Google Exposure Notification API instead.