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Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

channelnewsasia.com

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Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#81

Post by sneak »

gonehome wrote: post #56

One thing that drives me crazy about this is that Apple and Google partnered to come up with a brilliant Bluetooth solution to contact tracing right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was privacy first, well designed, and it works. It was hamstrung by being opt-in instead of opt-out, relying on state level cooperation and misunderstood by people who didn’t even attempt to try to understand it (including here on HN)…

We had a lot of other existing technology, like simple face masks, that could have been deployed against the spread of the pandemic as well.

It is almost a case study on how you can't solve problems that are fundamentally social ones by throwing technology (old or new) at the problem.

You're absolutely right that it's a shame.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#82

Post by verroq »

gonehome wrote: post #77
kypro wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally refuse to use any contact tracing because an envitible consequence of its adoption is the idea that mass surveillance is legitimate so long as it can be argued it's keeping people safe. Tech like this is always abused by governments. Just look at how governments are attacking encrypted messaging services today. It would be naive to think same thing wouldn't happen for any popular privacy-first contact tr…

Your comment is another example of dismissing what they did without understanding it. As a result of this we now have less effective, higher privacy risk implementations in place.

We’re trying to tell you that this would have happened anyway and contact tracing itself is just another instrument in the surveillance state.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#83

Post by bigiain »

asiando wrote: post #29
bigiain wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Singapore is a surveillance state. And the Australian Covid tracing app is a copy/paste from the public open sourced github repo the Singapore government shared. I guess being part of FiveEyes makes any fantasy of me _not_ living in a surveillance state pretty lame...

Having an app per country was unnecessary to begin with. All that Google and Apple had to do is supply the UI and accept government requests to enable the system in their country.

Apple and Google’s “exposure notification” is less useful in some important ways - it isn’t capable of backtracking to find associated contacts of infections further back in the chain. Bunnie has a good blog post about that here: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=69

Apple and Google’s thing was late to the party too, both Singapore and Australia had published their apps before the in built OS exposure notification because a thing (and I’d ballpark over 90% of Android phones haven’t got OS upgrades available that let them use the Google one anyway, none of my Android devices have it, being stuck with no manufacturer support or locked down by carriers).

So Australia and Singapore pushed on with their non OS native versions of the apps, even though the Bluetooth implementation on iOS made it very unreliable if the app wasn’t running and in the foreground. (The Android version’s Bluetooth is more reliable, if just chews through battery at a very quick pace...)

The end result is almost no useful data has come out of it here: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/15/covid...

Just 20 “close contacts” identified, and the government stalling on freedom of information requests to find out if any active cases were identified from those.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#84

Post by verroq »

gonehome wrote: post #80
verroq wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can be forced to change whatever implementation they have by the government then it helps no one. It’s just giving them more information on top of all their existing data they already have on you.

> “ If they can be forced to change whatever implementation they have by the government then it helps no one.” They can’t be easily forced to change the implementation and their implementation reduces the risk of privacy problems. It’s designed explicitly to be effective without increasing that risk and without giving the government any individual’s information. It’s worth reading the doc I linked.

And it’s a solution looking for a problem. No one wanted this. Not the people and not the government.

It doesn’t solve my problem because I will not use such an app, period.

It doesn’t solve the government’s objective of maximum data collection so they won’t use it.

The very idea of privacy conscious contact tracing is an oxymoron.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#85

Post by gonehome »

sneak wrote: post #81
gonehome wrote: post #56

One thing that drives me crazy about this is that Apple and Google partnered to come up with a brilliant Bluetooth solution to contact tracing right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was privacy first, well designed, and it works. It was hamstrung by being opt-in instead of opt-out, relying on state level cooperation and misunderstood by people who didn’t even attempt to try to understand it (including here on HN)…

We had a lot of other existing technology, like simple face masks, that could have been deployed against the spread of the pandemic as well. It is almost a case study on how you can't solve problems that are fundamentally social ones by throwing technology (old or new) at the problem. You're absolutely right that it's a shame.

Yes - I agree, we need both.

Sane policy and competent people to prioritize policy in order to lead effectively and move what needs to happen forward (massive categorical failure in the US on this bit, both in government and initial media response to the virus).

We also need the technical solution to consider privacy risk in the initial design so that we don’t implement something that can be abused later for other purposes.

This second part we have and it’s a great solution, but without the policy/leadership piece we can’t leverage it.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#86

Post by dirtyid »

gonehome wrote: post #56

One thing that drives me crazy about this is that Apple and Google partnered to come up with a brilliant Bluetooth solution to contact tracing right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was privacy first, well designed, and it works. It was hamstrung by being opt-in instead of opt-out, relying on state level cooperation and misunderstood by people who didn’t even attempt to try to understand it (including here on HN)…

Exposure notification is not contact tracing. Questionable if effective contact tracing on mass scale without privacy violation is possible. At least Singapore contact trace and enforcement chain worked. Worse, A&G hubris in their solution and lack of cooperation with governments that wanted a proper contact trace solution bordered on insolence has caused preventable deaths. The fact that two platform owners could prevent the rest of the world from mounting proper epidemic responses is terrifying. Even more so if it's just a handful of employees dictating their culture to the rest of the world.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#87

Post by NicoJuicy »

throwaw999 wrote: post #79
kasperni wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Government will collect as much data as possible citing medical reasons and then use the data as it pleases saying since we collect Some governments... We don't all live in a surveillance state.

I'd be happy to learn which governments in your opinion wouldn't abuse such power.

Europe ( perhaps excluding Hungary). Even then, the bluetooth based protocol of Apple and Google can't be used for location tracing.

The governments have 0 location data in possession when based on that protocol.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#88

Post by gonehome »

verroq wrote: post #82
gonehome wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is another example of dismissing what they did without understanding it. As a result of this we now have less effective, higher privacy risk implementations in place.

We’re trying to tell you that this would have happened anyway and contact tracing itself is just another instrument in the surveillance state.

And I’m trying to tell you that this overly simplistic response ignores pragmatic real-world solutions that let people accomplish hard things even with multiple constraints.

It is in fact possible to have effective and privacy preserving contact tracing at scale.

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#89

Post by thih9 »

gonehome wrote: post #77
kypro wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally refuse to use any contact tracing because an envitible consequence of its adoption is the idea that mass surveillance is legitimate so long as it can be argued it's keeping people safe. Tech like this is always abused by governments. Just look at how governments are attacking encrypted messaging services today. It would be naive to think same thing wouldn't happen for any popular privacy-first contact tr…

Your comment is another example of dismissing what they did without understanding it. As a result of this we now have less effective, higher privacy risk implementations in place.

It looks like you’re saying that apple’s and google’s solution can’t be used for privacy abuse.

Could it facilitate implementing one? E.g. could a country push for changes to how the solution works within a given location?

Re: Singapore says contact tracing data may be used for criminal investigations

#90

Post by gonehome »

thih9 wrote: post #89
gonehome wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is another example of dismissing what they did without understanding it. As a result of this we now have less effective, higher privacy risk implementations in place.

It looks like you’re saying that apple’s and google’s solution can’t be used for privacy abuse. Could it facilitate implementing one? E.g. could a country push for changes to how the solution works within a given location?

Phones track location so yeah a government could always try to force companies to hand over location data, but that issue is orthogonal to this solution.

Their Bluetooth implementation makes it harder for governments to request more problematic location data, because a solution exists that doesn’t require this kind of data.

The existence of this solution reduces privacy abuse risk.

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