Where? Could you source this statement, please?

I think the best route to improvement here is to examine the premise a little more closely. No one derived any advantage of which I am aware from the direct use of the applications for their intended purpose. Contact tracing systems everywhere have been eventually overwhelmed by the nature of the actual pathogen, as SARS-CoV-2 has become so successfully infectious. Stranger communications traceable only by near-field communication registration were not sufficiently important to the spread of the illness to make this use of smartassphones relevant. If this is true, the whole point of the piece needs to be changed, so it's important to see what the evidence of effectiveness is. You show no sources on this.

To attribute peoples' willingness to have their movements tracked by anyone to the particular legal condition of laws concerning "data protection" is also an unexamined premise. Those of us who are concerned with out privacy weren't carrying a smartassphone in which we could have run an application (whether issued by the government or by Columbia University, for example) that would have provided anyone with location information. On the other hand, where is the reliable evidence that people who are careless about their privacy in general were less careless about Covid tracing applications government as opposed to the usual private bandits were involved?