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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

#61

Post by harry8 »

epistasis wrote: post #56
harry8 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 uninteresti…

It's insane such a nonsense claim was made here. Really. Why would anyone take it seriously? Make the case it should be taken seriously in the light of what we've found in the past few years. Please.

Such a substanceless assertion can be dismissed without further analysis.

If we don't like how awful the reputations if silicon valley companies are with respect such claims, having a tantrum about it doesn't change much.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#62

Post by thinkingemote »

Note: In China it's private businesses, not the government, that force people to install the tracing apps on their phones before being let into their establishments. The same thing can and probably will happen here : get tracked or be denied service.

The government doesn't have to do anything.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#63

Post by 6c696e7578 »

bronzeage wrote: post #2

They are trying to prevent both millions of deaths and and worst economic collapse in modern age. Privacy isn't as important. Fight this thing when corona-virus is over.

I agree, anyone who thinks they have privacy whilst carrying a mini communications computer in their pocket is dumb.

Remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARRIOR_PRIDE, Pepperide Farms does.

There is no point trying to remain private whilst there is a phone where you have little control over private data. If you want privacy then you should look more towards using a collection of VPNs and fuzz your browser each time you use it. Change the installed fonts, randomize the browser window and destroy the user account that started it.

You can't do this reliably with a phone. All surveillance relies upon the user favouring convenience.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#64

Post by g_p »

FabHK wrote: post #32
halixand wrote: post #14

Moxie Marlinspike has an interesting analysis on this: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1248707315626201088

He objects to two things: 1. Doing it globally would require download of too much data, thus (contra promise of the spec) location data will have to enter. However, from what I can tell, that could be very coarse data, on the level of country and/or time zone (thus, not even necessitating access to GPS location data). I don’t see it as a major problem. 2. The “prank” danger: someone just pressing “I’m infected” for f…

I don't think there is any suggestion of using any kind of granular location data, be it GPS or cellular network location. Doing it per region could certainly work, and only reveal maybe 4 bits of information about location. I imagine for Europe and some parts of the world, per country could be too granular due to localised travel (at least as things ease back), but at region level you would be revealing more from your (even cellular) IP address than actually passing on a rough region of interest.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#66

Post by joering2 »

bronzeage wrote: post #2

They are trying to prevent both millions of deaths and and worst economic collapse in modern age. Privacy isn't as important. Fight this thing when corona-virus is over.

> They are trying to prevent both millions of deaths and and worst economic collapse in modern age.

Are you implying we are not already in the worst economic collapse? Is there something to prevent at this point in time?

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#67

Post by cinquemb »

nickysielicki wrote: post #58
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.

Yet, still there is a conscious effort on the part of these companies/orgs/governments to slang the "we're protecting your privacy™" narrative because it's always easier to these leverage tools against others when they don't see it as a threat and aren't willing to mitigate against it to any degree.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#68

Post by Slartie »

FabHK wrote: post #32
halixand wrote: post #14

Moxie Marlinspike has an interesting analysis on this: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1248707315626201088

He objects to two things: 1. Doing it globally would require download of too much data, thus (contra promise of the spec) location data will have to enter. However, from what I can tell, that could be very coarse data, on the level of country and/or time zone (thus, not even necessitating access to GPS location data). I don’t see it as a major problem. 2. The “prank” danger: someone just pressing “I’m infected” for f…

His argument No. 1 is self-defeating. If you have rapid exponential growth and would have to publish hundreds of megabytes of keys per day (and phones only need to download the delta to the previous day), this approach of contact tracing is useless and you must instead get the entire population under lockdown. If everybody is sheltering at home, nobody needs notifications of possible contacts, because everybody is doing what would be the response to such a notification already. So you can simply disable the app in a certain country or don't accept submissions to the diagnosis server during that time.

This approach, just like the manual approach of tracking potential contacts via paper and phone, is only of use in a scenario with a very limited number of transmissions and an R (reproduction rate) of around or below 1. Its purpose is not to reach such a situation, but to aid in keeping that situation in effect without severe measures. But severe lockdowns must first suppress the infection counts to such levels before any contact tracing may work at all.

Re: Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform

#69

Post by GordonS »

jmull wrote: post #52

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 cont…

> This guy says, yeah, but the gubment could abuse the tracing mechanism for things besides an epidemic..

> ...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.

It doesn't have to be about the security services having root on your phone - they can use legislation, forcing Apple/Google to hand over location data so they can hoover it up. Alternatively, they can use legal loopholes - as we've seen before after Snowden.

Honestly, it's naive to think they wouldn't try to get this data.

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