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Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

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Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#51

Post by thendrill »

quezzle wrote: post #6

There’s always ALWAYS some tech extremist who can never see the good, can only EVER see the dark shadows, the spooks, the spies, the nefarious dark forces. For these guys it’s all a matter of sticking by their extremely dogmatic “principles”. Wouldn’t matter if god himself turned up to do good deeds for all, they’d condemn his omnipotent presence for its ability to spy and break privacy. They’ll always come out at ti…

Please mention some of the "good" that went by unseen for example during the last 30 years.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#52

Post by jmull »

This guy is wrong about the Apple/Google contact tracing program.

As created, it’s opt-in only and does not report matches to a central authority.

This guy says, yeah, but the gubment could abuse the tracing mechanism for things besides an epidemic, force your phone to report matches centrally, and force the removal of the opt-in part of it.

...except, if a government can pull those off, they don’t need this new contact tracing platform. These assume the government already has deep, control of the details of the operating system.

In other words, this contact tracing platform has nothing to do with his privacy concerns.

There are always people who see a tragic pandemic and just see a chance to use the concern and attention to highlight their own cause. And then there are the ones who fight against the efforts to mitigate the suffering to promote their cause, like this guy. Whew.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#54

Post by pinkfoot »

pdkl95 wrote: post #35
posnet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments don't need it. The model suggested links nearby bluetooth mac addresses which get linked to the phones IMEI, and governments already have multitudes of legal ways to link names to IMEIs.

Cell tower based contact tracking is already used to infer someone's social graph and pattern-of-life. Bluetooth association data - even with opaque tokens - can easily be correlated with cell tower movement to refine CO-TRAVELER style analysis. Cell-tower-resolution analysis is already very powerful - it can trivially reveal someone's associations and overall behavior. When correlated with short-range proximity data…

In a previous life we we also able to identify the owners of anonymous (burner) SIM cards.

Even crooks and anarchists lead very predictable lives.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#56

Post by epistasis »

harry8 wrote: post #39
01CGAT wrote: post #4

The technology used for this is the same as for locating your lost device and takes care of privacy in a very smart way, more info: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet... "Apple says an elaborate rotating key scheme will soon let you track down your stolen laptop, but not let anyone track you. Not even Apple."

I'm sorry if a one word dismissal is too confronting for those who know absolutely nothing about what has been going on in dragnet surveillance in silicon valley. But see all these words I'm writing? They don't change the fact that it is impossible to be cynical enough about such fatuous claims. You'd have to be stunningly ignorant to give them more than a second of credulous thought. Apple are not the good guys or a…

This is no better, because you are not saying anything of substance. There is no engagement with fact or reality, just pure emotion and intuition. While this is good enough for some political offices, it is not typically good enough for HN comments.

If you can show the claim to be wrong, you will receive tremendous accolades, and perhaps fame within certain communities. If you just have suspicions, that's uninteresting and not useful.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#57

Post by yuy7878 »

This seems to misunderstand or dismiss a lot of important details about the proposal.

> The current specifications allow phones to learn when and where they were in contact with another device.

That's over simplifying it massively. First the spec clearly states that no location data is recorded, since the location is not necessary for the application of contact tracing.

> By pushing a button on one phone, by reporting it as infected, all other phones that were recently in close proximity reveal themselves to the central server

This is not true, they clearly state that matches with a Diagnosis key is not uploaded to the diagnosis server.

> The current specifications allow phones to learn when and where they were in contact with another device. It is unclear whether the actual identity of that device is also revealed.

This is just not true, they make it abundantly clear in their specifications, that the identity of the device is never revealed.

> A company could install Bluetooth beacons equipped with this software at locations of interest (e.g. shopping malls). By reporting a particular beacon as ‘infected’ all phones (that have been lured into installing a loyalty app or that somehow have the SDK of the company embedded in some of the apps they use) will report that they were in the area.

This is not how this works, this is not how any of this works! It is highly speculative and extremely unlikely that any random APP will have access to the tracing key to make that even remotely plausible.

This criticism is obviously written by somebody who has not read the specification[1] or did not understood key aspects of it.

[1] https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing/

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#58

Post by nickysielicki »

avra wrote: post #36

I'm afraid someone has to tell the author that what is already possible is worse than the concerns raised here. This technology is actually an effort to not use the available methods that would ignore privacy.

Ding ding ding. It’s sad how quickly we forget that we live under dragnet digital surveillance. We haven’t even really internalized it.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#59

Post by [deleted] »

qwerty123457 wrote: post #13

??? I don't think anybody who catches the coronavirus wants to be anonymous. There is no social stigma. The problem is exactly the reverse: infected people would gladly tell everybody exposed, but they can't reach them since the virus spreads so easily and the exposed could be delivery drivers, people in the grocery store, etc

[deleted]

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#60

Post by g_p »

andy_ppp wrote: post #31

I mean surely mobile phone operators already have this information? I never hear about them being subpoenaed or attempting to deny requests, makes me think the make this information fully available.

Operators currently have handset location data, based on cell tower triangulation. I imagine many will store this, but this may vary by network. The absolute minimum you need, in order to run a network, is to know the current location of the handset, so you can route calls to it. Historical data isn't required for delivery of the service. I imagine in countries with weaker privacy laws, data like this can be used like we saw with the "tracking spring break beach-goers heading home".

Triangulated location data is far from precise however. It would let you determine roughly where someone is, but nothing like accurately enough to do contact tracing or infection monitoring. You'd also need to start storing historical location data on a huge scale, but it would be accurate to a few hundred metres typically. Not ideal for contact tracing.

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