I have absolutely no idea how you look at the sheer incompetence of many local and national governments over the last few years and, especially, months and come to the conclusion that what is really needed right now is a massive, invasive surveillance system.
Especially because what most people are arguing for (meter-level contact tracing and quarantine enforcement) already exists and is already accessible by governments in the form of tooling developed by telecoms that is already used for sporting events & police investigations.
Which is one of the many reasons I haven't regularly carried a cell phone in over a decade and neither should you.
And since I've been asked the question a ridiculous number of times recently - there is no such thing as a robust privacy preserving contact tracing tool - at best it's going to be a tool that tells you to stay home unless the trip is essential.
There is no such thing as a robust privacy preserving contact tracing tool because social graphs and location graphs are impossible to anonymity because anonymity is fundamentally about removing social and location context - once you do that all that is left is the honour system
Just be responsible, limit in-person social interaction and question every single decision your government makes that isn't about funding housing, healthcare and sustenance.
Finally, given the brutal reality that any "decentralized" "privacy-preserving" contact tracing system is likely going to rely on everyone carrying around their non-private, centralized tracking devices anyway I have no idea what mythical adversary you are defending against.
When putting forward solutions you have to take into account the potential for false positives, false negatives, the vulnerability of the population most likely to be exposed by any weaknesses and the existing effective harm reduction measures.
Any parameterization is going to be fragile to changes in pattern of life and is going to differ depending on arbitrary things like population density, what supermarkets healthcare workers go to and what movement restrictions are in place.
So you're creating a situation where more people are able to attack a a system than if it was centrally managed, putting more vulnerable populations at risk, creating more noise that healthcare workers have process, and battling the fundamental limitations of location privacy
And, to put it out there, does any of this new data actually change personal or public health decisions? Will it make secondary epidemics less likely?
Or can we skip it, socially isolate and when unable to, wear masks and limiting contact?
Or can we skip it, socially isolate and when unable to, wear masks and limiting contact?
Which is to say, if contact tracing is an essential and potentially effective public health measure then I can't see how you gain anything by trying to decentralize it but I see so many ways you actively endanger more people - you have a trade-off to prove there.
