Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#151

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #77

ceejayoz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just isn't being used right now. The American public exercised their power to elect politicians who'd end the draft as the Vietnam War got progressively more unpopular. It's well within our powers, if we care enough.

Is it, in fact, "well within our powers", or do you just believe it is? I don't, in general, believe "we could take this power away from government if we wanted to" is true without an existence proof.

> Is it, in fact, "well within our powers", or do you just believe it is?

Public opposition ended the Vietnam War and the draft. It would be political suicide to reactivate it barring a full-scale world war.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#152

Post by BiteCode_dev » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

turdnagel wrote: post #110

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #100

Promising opt-in is a bit disingenuous. These tech giants are creating a technological capability. Whether or not it is opt-in, opt-out or mandatory is then decided by governments, now and in the future. This is of course nothing new. But it's worth noting considering how high the tolerance for extremely intrusive government action currently is and how extremely weak any resistance is bound to be. I'm not saying I'm…

Do you really think that this feature has drawn a line in the sand where previously they couldn't track you and now they can?

No, it was already terrible before.

But it was labelled as terrible. I was for the secret service.

Now it's going to be culturally accepted, and in the hand regular administrators.

This is on order or magnitude worse, for something that was awful.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#153

Post by bwblabs » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #100

Promising opt-in is a bit disingenuous. These tech giants are creating a technological capability. Whether or not it is opt-in, opt-out or mandatory is then decided by governments, now and in the future. This is of course nothing new. But it's worth noting considering how high the tolerance for extremely intrusive government action currently is and how extremely weak any resistance is bound to be. I'm not saying I'm…

After a quit scan of the protocol and API outlined by Apple and Google: it looks privacy & technically sound to me.

I would remove the Android FAILED_REJECTED_OPT_IN status code (https://www.blog.google/documents/55/Android_Contact_Tracing...).

I cannot find it in the Apple API specs, but maybe it's not defined in there yet.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#154

Post by clairity » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #115

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #100

Promising opt-in is a bit disingenuous. These tech giants are creating a technological capability. Whether or not it is opt-in, opt-out or mandatory is then decided by governments, now and in the future. This is of course nothing new. But it's worth noting considering how high the tolerance for extremely intrusive government action currently is and how extremely weak any resistance is bound to be. I'm not saying I'm…

They already have the shiny button. They can compel cell phone companies to give this data to the government already, without you knowing about it. At least this way you will get some control of the info and you'll know what was collected and have control of it's disclosure (for now). In other words, this is no worse than what the government is already capable of, it just makes it easier for you to share the data wit…

that isn't a reason to be complacent about furthering governmental/corporate surveillance capabilities.

in fact, it should remind us to take away those prior surveillance capabilities, and demand any contact tracing system to give control to users and be fully off-limits to large power structures (e.g., only shared between users and researchers).

and being hard to do so is no excuse. we have millions of people we can work on the problem if it's so important to warrant such massive effort.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#155

Post by foota » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #148

snarf21 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This functionality is already live in Find My iPhone. iPhones are performing these associations already. The bigger change is Android joining and sharing the data with researchers.

You do know that there also is a Find My Device service for Android that runs on all Android phones?

This is very different than what you think when you hear "find my iPhone|Android". Iirc the find my iPhone tech does phone to phone association to identify the location.

See: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet...

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#156

Post by mturmon » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #47

That combination Apple-Google logogram is scary! It’s like an image from some corporate future dystopian sci-fi.

The logogram in OP suppresses Google’s four colors, and so did the one on Google’s blog:

https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/appl...

Also, the Apple logo is first. I wonder how this was decided?

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#157

Post by JorgeGT » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

Redoubts wrote: post #67

Reason077 wrote: post #47

That combination Apple-Google logogram is scary! It’s like an image from some corporate future dystopian sci-fi.

It's like you don't trust Weyland-Yutani at all.

I only trust Tyrell Corporation for my off-world needs.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#158

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #146

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #139

Two major OS platforms covering majority of the population working together in an attempt to better track current populations at behest of the government. How could anyone even begin to feel a wee bit cynical? To question this effort it worse than wanting PATRIOT ACT to expire. It is downright unamerican. I hate the fact that I definitely see a good reason for it and the goverment is more than happy to accommodate th…

This doesn't appear to be a way for the government or tech companies to track people. Looking through the API docs I think it's designed just to alert people who may have been exposed. It lets someone identify as Covid-19 positive and then if people have come into contact with them, you can be alerted. Most of the processing happens on device and it doesn't use location data. It looks like it would be very hard to ab…

It is possible I am not expressing myself clearly. The API may not directly access location data ( though I have a hard time believing that either ). Processing may be local, but I just find it very difficult to believe that the information gleamed from that common platform would not be used. And if it can be used, it will be used. And then it will correlated with information that was previously gathered via regular means. I am not sure how that is not a concern? To Trump's credit, he seems hesitant to go all in on this front.

edit: There is something that occurred to me after writing this. FB had an API at the beginning of their game when they were shooting to get developers' attention. They did. As the leaked documents show what really end up happening, API evolved in ways that benefited big boys. I guess my rambling point is that whatever current specs say, may quickly become rather distant past.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#159

Post by buboard » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

Why is this needed? and why would i sign up for it , esp. knowing how much they both know about me already? The text doesn't tell us why contact tracing is important

- Did contact tracing apps really save anything in singapore/taiwan/israel?

- Is sweden really doing that bad without this kind of surveillance?

- What is tracing going to help anyway? it will warn people to go to the hospital early ? To do what? there is no cure and they 'd better stay away from infection nests like hospitals anyway. It's not like people don't get symptoms days before they need hospitalization

- Is tracing really going to be workable? this is a highly infectious virus, and people networks have very short path length, which means that, without social distancing, 100% of the people will get notified that they might have been infected in any day

- This data does not need to reach anyone's servers. Infected people could just publicly and anonymously upload their location in a public server for other users to crosscheck. The less data are hidden behind walls, the less chance of abuse.

Even if tracing might slow down the curve, this slowdown shouldnt last forever and it should be targetted, not anonymous. It is important that the spread speeds up in the parts of the population that carry less risk (children, women). There is really no good way to do that other than specific , local measures of SD.

It would be very different if these phones had a thermometer, but i think some regulator removed them.

Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

#160

Post by santhoshr » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

The Indian Government launched a contact tracing app that has more than 10m+ downloads: https://www.mygov.in/aarogya-setu-app/

Not sure how ubiquitous it is. Nevertheless, given that Android is 90 percent of the market in India, may be this can help overcome the iPhone OS-level constraints that makes it necessary for both platforms to work together in markets like the US.