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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

#311

Post by y7 »

rburhum wrote: post #290

Went over the docs (Google and Apple's), but there are a few things that are not clear to me. This is my summary of how I interpreted it works: - A [Tracing Key] is stored locally in every device. - A [Rolling Key] gets regenerated every day based on the [Tracing Key] - A [Proximity Identifier] gets regenerated every 15 minutes and broadcasted to other bluetooth devices. - The Contact Tracing Bluetooth Specification…

> Q: Wouldn't this list be insanely long? More so if it doesn't have any concept of location?

I don't think such a list would be that long:

1. It's not unreasonable to have some approximate concept of location (e.g. "New York City and surroundings")

2. A contract tracing app is only useful when the number of new infections is low enough, such that all possible contacts can be tested.

3. For a tracing key 32 bytes would suffice. Even for 15,000 relevant infections you're only looking at 0.5 MB of data.

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

#313

Post by ravenstine »

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…

It'll be opt-in until an HN headline says it's not and then there are subsequent "post mortem" articles from Google with a bunch of PR gibberish saying "whoops it was an engineering mistake", by which point everyone's become acclimated to their technological presence.

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

#315

Post by acqq »

jhhh wrote: post #293
DavideNL wrote: post #174

Am i the only one who thinks it's mindblowing that people use Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. however now that Apple + Google release a tool to prevent thousands of people from dying in a pandemic they start thinking/complaining about the possible privacy implications? (without even having read the specs or knowing the details...)

How many people complaining in this thread use or don't use Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin? Unless you actually know then it seems like you've contrived a group of hypothetical hypocrite 'complainers' to complain against.

And Whatsapp.

And how many people not having already their various metadata collected by Google and not having anything on the Apple servers?

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

#316

Post by dwaite »

zby wrote: post #256

I know it is about APIs - but no mention of any Free or at least Open Source Software example implementations makes me worry. I was expecting that people would organize around git repos - but no, just one of the many COVID tracing initiatives published their code. It is https://github.com/tripleblindmarket/covid-safe-paths by the way.

I believe the idea here is that the tracing is done at the platform level, where you can both have different capabilities with the wireless functions of the device, and can have different privacy constraints on usage compared to those of application sandboxing.

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

#317

Post by arcticbull »

SkyBelow wrote: post #270
monksy wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't being forcefully sharing their health status via FB, IG, etc. Imagine if Facebook published if you had an STD to your friends.

Given the number of deaths caused by STDs, it is perhaps justifiable for such data to be shared in the same fashion as one's Covid-19 status, assuming the sharing of the latter is justified.

COVID is unlikely dramatically more deadly than the flu, so the question is, if you're okay sharing your health data over COVID, why not the flu? It kills 650,000 people (60,000 Americans) every single year. The reality is widespread panic moments are when we lose our civil rights.

Remember 9/11? That year more people died slipping and falling in the shower than died in the twin towers. More people died because they chose to drive short distances instead of flying than died in the twin towers. And we got the Patriot act and a trillion dollar war. Humans have a way of overreacting.

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

#318

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

arcticbull wrote: post #305
dickjocke wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's old people AND people with comorbidities, which is a ton of people. 2. Lots of old people, which for Covid is about 65, still work full time jobs. Some of them fly every week. These aren't 95+ year olds. 3. I'm sure people of all ages think their life is very valuable, and very few people consider themselves candidates for sacrifice. Certainly not for privacy concerns. 4. 10x deadlier than the flu.

1. It's old people AND people with comorbidities, which is a ton of people. Yep, and they should shelter in place. Nobody else should. 2. Lots of old people, which for Covid is about 65, still work full time jobs. Some of them fly every week. These aren't 95+ year olds. Yep, and they should shelter in place, because they're in a risk category. 3. I'm sure people of all ages think their life is very valuable, and very…

The ratio of asymptomatic to symptomatic people has been measured, and it's not nearly as high as you're saying. China has been quarantining and testing every single person entering the country, and they find that 2/3rds of cases are asymptomatic.

Moreover, Germany has conducted a randomized serological survey of the population of one town where there was a large outbreak, and determined that the true mortality rate was about 0.4%, which is an order of magnitude higher than mortality due to the flu. That's the mortality if there's excellent healthcare and the system isn't overwhelmed. Mortality will also depend on the age structure of the population, rates of obesity and smoking, etc.

Because a large fraction of the population is immune to the seasonal flu (both through vaccination and previous infection), far fewer people contract it than would contract CoVID-19 in an uncontrolled epidemic.

The combination of a much larger rate of infection than the flu and far higher mortality means that CoVID-19 would kill orders of magnitude more people in one year.

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

#319

Post by dan-robertson »

jefftk wrote: post #46

See https://idlewords.com/2020/03/we_need_a_massive_surveillance... for why this is really important

Except that in this case Google are trying to produce a new contact tracing dataset rather than just giving the government access to the location data they already have.

Some ideas as to why:

- lots of people have iPhones and Apple have made efforts to make them less trackable so maybe there isn’t enough data about enough people

- google are scared that this would lead to their data collection/retention being more regulated

- The location data google collect just isn’t granular enough

- google don’t want to give the government access to their location data because they believe strongly that it should be private between google and the people being tracked/they’re scared that people will react badly as they begin to realise how much data google collects about them

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

#320

Post by Simon_says »

zby wrote: post #250
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is also another idea floating - let the phones emit an ultrasound - then the other phone can estimate proximity, by the volume or delays.

Thanks. I wasn’t using my battery anyways.
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