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Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology

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

#221

Post by ehsankia »

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…

Indeed, if I understand correct, the device locally stores a bunch of keys of people you've been in contact to, and there is no way of working backward from the keys to who it was, and these keys also change daily. Then when someone marks themselves as infected for days A through Z, their keys for those days is sent to devices, where the devices check locally if they have the given person-day keys stored.

Do I understand this correctly? It's almost all done locally, there's nothing about location, and almost nothing is send up until you mark yourself as infected, right?

EDIT: This is the best high level explained I've found: https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contac...

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

#222

Post by crypt1d »

WikipediasBad wrote: post #214
crypt1d wrote: post #212

I've spent the last 3 weeks with my team building exactly this - contact tracing apps for both android and ios that use bluetooth tech[1]. This will probably require us to redo the app completely to fit into their API plans, but I'm glad they are, in a way, acknowledging our idea. The troubling thing is, bluetooth-based contact tracing is in no way easy. Different android phones handle background bluetooth scanning /…

Do you think that GPS coordinates will be exposable with the API so that there can be public tracing maps online? Obviously a big privacy issue where the actual bluetooth ID and the person's identity have to be fully anonymized but if GPS coordinates of contact points can be exposed publicly, there can be good public tracing maps that can show where contact events are happening and in what numbers so that people can…

I dont see any mention of it in the current context of bluetooth device proximity tracing. It is possible, however, that apps that will build up on this API will also fetch location history separately from already established mechanisms on each OS.

As a matter of fact I see this as a very likely scenario as this is precisely what South Korea has already done.[1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE-cA4UK07c

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

#223

Post by wiz21c »

pimterry wrote: post #39

An interesting Twitter thread on why the stand-alone contact tracing apps that many others are building won't work, and why integrated platform solutions like this are necessary: https://twitter.com/zainy/status/1248482486524379137 (but of course, necessary does not mean sufficient)

Also, efficiency depends on how many persons can be tested. If it's 10000 a day, in my country, it's about 1/500 th of the population a day... If it's enough to test say 1/10 of the population to have some results, this will take 1-2 months...

I have the impression that all of this is forced upon us as to make us believe that it is safe to get back to work ASAP. Wouldn't it be better to just wait ? (I'm not interested in the economical debate : this will invariably lead to compromises such as how many victims can we afford to keep the economy going ? (nobody will tell it that way, but in the end that's the truth behind those arguments))

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

#224

Post by almost_usual »

I think this would be a good solution for essential workers to track their personal health while social distancing is in effect.

I can foresee a large second wave due to this falling short if we relax social distancing measures. There have been cases where people test positive then test negative and then positive again. It would require redundant testing per individual on a schedule.

There are a lot of people who will not be tested, there are a lot of people without smartphones. This virus has spread so far at this point we’d need to test every US citizen to know the blast radius.

I understand people are hopeful and want things to return to ‘normal’ but I can’t imagine it without a vaccine in the US.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

tengbretson wrote: post #30

For the last 4 years I've read a constant stream of articles about how "This will be the end of our democracy", "Democracy is under threat!", etc. If we as a society agree to ubiquitous, mandatory location tracking and a complete suspension of the right to assembly in response to this virus then we never deserved a democracy in the first place.

[deleted]

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

#228

Post by snarf21 »

crishoj wrote: post #168
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.

The proposed technology is quite different from a service that located located devices. Rather, it would track what devices have been in proximity of each other, and not necessarily where.

I was speaking to the question of whether governments would then demand access to the data. They could force Apple and the Telcos to turn over the data they are already collecting pre-corona. I was just saying that that risk isn't new.

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

#229

Post by [deleted] »

mturmon wrote: post #156
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?

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by bosswipe »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #116
jedberg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> They can compel cell phone companies to give this data to the government already Bluetooth has a quite small range, which may give higher tracking precision (to anyone receiving the signal) than the data cell phone companies have.

I'm pretty sure he was referring to cell tower location data, not bluetooth. Though cell tower location data has low resolution, in the order of a few 100 feet to several miles. Not useful for contact tracing.
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