Wristband gadgets have been introduced to tracking people during lockdown. Bulgaria is the latest country to test the device.
About 50 people residing in Sofia-the capital of Bulgaria-will be given gadgets that can even track their single move using GPS satellite location data. The trial will be done in Bulgaria using the Poland-developed, Comarch Life wristband.
Many of the other countries are also trending towards this newly developed, people-tracking device to force the people to comply with the rules imposed during a lockdown.
Besides confirming whether the people are obeying the rules while quarantined, the tracker can also examine the heartbeat of a person and be used to call for emergency purposes.
In South Korea, people seemed to dis-obey the rules under quarantine, can be ordered to put on the electronic tracker.
The purpose of developing such technology is to combat the current situation and the people who avoid their smartphones to keep it with them in order to stay undetected while violating the regulations issued by the government authorities.
The specialty of the wristband is, it can notify the authorities when the wearer leaves home or try to remove the device.
Including Privacy International, many of the activist clans have alerted, some of the governments can use this pandemic as “Power Grab”.
Privacy International has stated new rules should be ” temporary, necessary, and proportionate.”
“When the pandemic is over, such extraordinary measures must be put to an end and held to account,” Privacy International further stated.
These electronic devices can also be used to register the close contact between people. If the person surfaces with COVID-19 symptoms, this device would notify the authority, and it could lead to help track the people who were in close interaction with the infected person. This would help to prevent COVID-19 from further spread.
Giant companies, Apple and Google have introduced a privacy-oriented methodology that uses Bluetooth to automate the process. The UK is also observing a similar method.
However, in the UK, approximately 12% of smartphones do not have Bluetooth-Low-Energy (BLE) feature that must be needed to work.
Many of the tech experts stated normal Bluetooth wristbands could also be utilized by the people who do not have smartphones.
“It would be an option to increase coverage and there are also cheaper Bluetooth devices that could have the basic functionality without being a full smartphone,” said Christophe Fraser from the Oxford Big Data Institute.
