Fundamental issues with contact tracing raised by Dutch experts must be addressed to show viability of DP-3T project – Issue #224
bartpreneel commented
As for effectiveness and privacy: the current proposal on the table is manual tracing. This is highly privacy invasive (with risk of abuse by the interviewers), and so far has shown to be not very effective. Manual tracing can only identify contacts you remember and you can identify (hence not a stranger you sat next to on the train for half an hour). While we may not be sure that contact tracing apps will work (that is a perfectly valid scientific statement that a scientific board can make), we are quite sure that manual tracing will not work. Hence a combined system has a good probability to be more effective. As for the human rights impact: IANAL, but the EPDB has made a clear statement.
I don’t know what the motives were for the Dutch rushed approach, but everyone could have predicted that this approach would fail badly and that it would tarnish the reputation of all contact tracing apps. As a consequence, public opinion and politicians in the Netherlands are now perhaps somewhat biased. I believe that other countries are taking a more careful approach. While the questions raised are of course legitimate, personally I do not think that it is appropriate to start exporting this negative experience to other countries by suggesting that all developments should be stopped until we are 100% sure that everything will work perfectly. Just my 2 cents.