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Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

safepaths.mit.edu

21–30 of 88 posts

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#21

Yes, By staying home, washing our hands, and not going out onto beaches and partying. Anyone found breaking the rules should be charged with biological assault.

a stupid idea that will never happen and completely ungrounded in reality? ah yes, the HN comments here we are. tell us more about “biological assault” when someone is proven to have the antibodies and not contagious.

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#22

Summary: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UGY07m8GNrUaj9bGRx07vDMccxT... Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.08567.pdf It seems like the way this preserves privacy is that you only upload your location information once you're tested positive, where it is "redacted" (I have very little faith in this) and then sent to everyone else so they can check to see if they were in contact with you. It's better than mass surveilla…

[deleted]

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#23

If sharing your location is optional, then there will be people who opt out. Depending on how many people opt out, the data may be useless.

I'm not an epidemiologist, but partial contact tracing is probably better than none especially if the goal is to slow not stop

"the goal is to slow not stop"

The goal is for it to stop. But anything that slows it down, is good.

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#24

Summary: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UGY07m8GNrUaj9bGRx07vDMccxT... Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.08567.pdf It seems like the way this preserves privacy is that you only upload your location information once you're tested positive, where it is "redacted" (I have very little faith in this) and then sent to everyone else so they can check to see if they were in contact with you. It's better than mass surveilla…

Mandatory or optional? Will the government force me to upload if I am positive? Or can I choose not to?

What do you think is the ethical option? If you are positive shouldn't the people in contact with you know it? I'm genuinely asking, it's not a rethorical question. I think they should know they have been exposed to the virus at least, not necessarily knowing it was you. You already have lost some rights of movement and assembly. Losing some privacy may help you regain them sooner.

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#25
Instead of using GPS, consider using the WiFi base stations. Specifically, each location can be characterized by the set of WiFi base stations a phone can detect. GPS is useful while outdoors, but virus transmission is somewhat difficult outdoors. Indoors, a conference room on the third floor and the 40th floor will have the same GPS coordinates, but a phone in each location will detect a different set of WIFI based stations. This paper shows how WiFi base stations can be used https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.04730.pdf.

I might not understand methods to achieve privacy, but here are some thoughts. 1. The data could be stored more safely with something like Intel SGX, where only the application can access the data. In this scenario, the carrier (or healthcare worker), uploads the carrier’s path into SGX-based database. Then, individual users that are concerned about their risk could use the app to upload their location paths into the SGX-based system and learn if they are at risk as a simple yes/no. (I have never built an SGX application, so I might be mistaken on its abilities.) 2. I don’t think this is possible: “The solution is a ‘pull’ model where users can download encrypted location information about carriers” If the application is on my device, I can decompile it and get the decryption key or use other methods to dump the carriers’ location data to disk. 3. It seems that the user’s data is also stored on the device. This data is then at risk of being stolen by malicious applications. Instead, the location data can be encrypted with a public key that can only be decrypted on the SGX-protected servers.

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#26
post #5

Individual privacy is where I draw a line in the sand. I'm ready to do many things, but that does not include allowing geotracking, geofencing or any other restriction on the freedom of movement and freedom of assembly. The government can shut businesses, shut public parks and beaches, but what we do in our homes, clubs and other private properties is off limits.

> any other restriction on the freedom of movement and freedom of assembly

People abusing these freedoms in spite of lockdowns are what's going to kill hundreds of thousands of people in the coming days.

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#27
post #3

Are tools such as homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, etc. applicable here? There should be a way for users to control their location data, and opt-in to sharing it at times like this, and then opt-out later.

Homomorphic encryption is not computationally practical and differential privacy relies on noise which is not ideal when (i) errors compound as is the case of contact tracing where each new node introduces many candidates for exposure and (ii) there is a high cost of false positives or negatives.

For those curious by the claim that homomorphic encryption is not computationally practical, Bruce Shneier has a great article on it

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/homomorphic_e...

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#28

Yes, By staying home, washing our hands, and not going out onto beaches and partying. Anyone found breaking the rules should be charged with biological assault.

It's being taken for granted that nearly everybody (Cuomo just said 80%) is going to get it, so it doesn't make sense to get angry at someone for increasing your risk of catching it. The efforts to slow the spread are about giving the healthcare system time to cope. So, yes, people are being antisocial if they don't follow the rules but it's not sane to treat it like you're personally being assaulted. This isn't ebol…

> The efforts to slow the spread are about giving the healthcare system time to cope. So, yes, people are being antisocial if they don't follow the rules but it's not sane to treat it like you're personally being assaulted. This isn't ebola or HIV.

No. It should be treated as attempted mass murder. Because this is what it boils down to: one idiot causing a bunch of deaths downstream, plus some more by contributing to overloading healthcare.

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#29

Are tools such as homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, etc. applicable here? There should be a way for users to control their location data, and opt-in to sharing it at times like this, and then opt-out later.

Because my guess is that location will give you too may false positives if ppl realy use that system. I wonder if it would not be better to do sth like emitting colocation ble beacons with totp sequence and a random secret. If some is tested positive you release the secret or a even only a list of the emitted beacons in the relevant timeframe. Everyone can then check against the list they recorded. Does that make sense?

Re: Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any other restriction on the freedom of movement and freedom of assembly. > clubs and other private properties is off limits. To give you the benefit of the doubt, you don’t mean that you refuse to have temporarily restricted movement during a pandemic?

I believe that is what they refuse. I refuse it.

Wow.

It’s so selfish to sacrifice other people’s lives for your own delusional paranoia.

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