Privacy watchdogs are voicing concerns over proposals across the country to implement smartphone apps to help track COVID-19.
New Brunswick, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan are among the provinces looking at or planning on creating smartphone apps that would track a user’s whereabouts.
Alberta is the first province to launch an app. Known as contact tracing, the apps track those who the user comes in to contact with, commonly by monitoring a device’s Bluetooth signal.
The use of the technology, and the information the apps gather, has become a subject of debate in Canada. “When we develop these sorts of tools or applications, we’re entering into a totally new class or form of surveillance,” said Christopher Parsons, a