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

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

#371

Post by throwaway122378 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

The_Double wrote: post #240

There is surprisingly little discussion about the actual spec here. It looks really good to me! - Advertisements change every 15 minutes, are not trackable unless keys are shared. - The only central bit is a repository of "infected" daily keys. - No knowledge about contacts is shared with a central authority. Nothing is shared unless you are infected and decide to share your keys, which are only valid for one day. I…

Now people who simply care about privacy are “extremist”

Perfect way to begin marginalizing people who care for privacy

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

#372

Post by olliej » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:06 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…

there's no button the government can press - the broadcast data is short term identifiers that can't be linked without know the day key. The identifiers are literally just a random 16 byte number derived sequentially from the day key.

The day key is only known if the user elects to publish those keys.

If you have a collection of day keys you don't know who published them as there's no device information in that.

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

#373

Post by champtar » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

The spec seems nice, but we need a unique app with a unique set of "diagnosis servers". When you take an international flight with one or multiple connections you are in contact with people from many different countries, should you install all the available contact tracing app available on the app store ?

If you have one app per country, you could have the "diagnosis servers" of all the countries federate and exchange data, but in the end it's easier and more effective to have 1 official open-source app from say the WHO.

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

#374

Post by olliej » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

petedoyle wrote: post #79

This is huge. A limiting factor has been iOS not being able to (on purpose, for privacy, and battery life) do BLE scanning (edit: or advertising, thanks Slartie) in the background. I imagine this will enable that for specific apps, and I have high confidence privacy will be well-implemented by Apple's involvement (edit: see tastroder's comment for technical docs). Having a single, well-designed spec for Bluetooth adv…

they're short term ids, setup to explicitly prevent linking to any other hardware characteristics, etc

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

#375

Post by crazygringo » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:09 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.

It's oddly natural to see them together.

Many years ago I was at a black market in Beijing filled with every possible fashion counterfeit, and I found one black leather belt that had both Gucci and Calvin Klein logos on it.

It similarly seemed natural for a second ("even more fashion, right") until my brain did a double-take.

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

#376

Post by donarb » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #335

You can troll by falsely claiming to be infected. With strategically placed beacons you could scare a lot of people. If the system is as private as they claim it will be hard to filter out serial trolls. I suspect they will try to join whatever data is present in your "I'm infected" report (at least IP, idk if there will be other stuff. advertiser id?) with their other databases, using trolls as a justification.

The app using the API is provided by a local health authority. In order to trigger an alert to other users you need to have tested positive by the agency whose app you are using.

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

#377

Post by olliej » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

alyz wrote: post #203

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...)

This is dangerously close to Feinstein's "think of the children" argument. If people complain about EARN IT, they should investigate privacy implications of this "enhanced" tracking technology.

it's explicitly not a tracking technology.

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

#378

Post by arcticbull » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #361

arcticbull wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lifetime risk of death being involved in a car accident is 1%. You're off by a factor of 100. It's .01%. > The lifetime risk of dying of an opioid overdose is 2%. For who? Someone who uses opioids? Maybe, on average, again you're off by a factor of 100 or more. > We do not know how deadly it is, all we know is that of people who go to the hospital No, of people who test positive, which includes people with rela…

> You're off by a factor of 100. It's .01%.

> For who? Someone who uses opioids? Maybe, on average, again you're off by a factor of 100 or more.

No, lol, it's not. Those are averages across the US population. Your lifetime odds in the US of dying in an automotive accident is 1:103 [1].

I should have said accidental poisoning which is 1:64 [2] but half of that is actually opioids (1:96) so you're still more likely to die of an opioid overdose than being a party to a car accident. Most people don't set out to get hooked on Oxy, they get hurt or undergo surgery, are prescribed them, and that's that.

There's 40,000 deaths per year related to car accidents, which if you multiply out by the average lifetime (78.69 years) is right around 3.2 million, or 1%.

This is fair to compare against COVID because due to its extremely limited propensity for mutation, the COVID mortality rate does represent what approximates lifetime risk. (i.e. unlike the flu, you won't get it again).

> South Korea is probably the best current testbed here...

I argue the best testbed is the German study I cited where they actually tested... everyone. CFR is not mortality rate, its about an order of magnitude higher, again, I cited my data. And in my intuitive explanation that you're not factoring out adverse selection risk of only very sick people going to the hospital in the first place.

> Normalized by population, Sweden has seen more deaths and more infections than California.

Because everyone in California is inside. I'm sure they've seen an order of magnitude more flu deaths too because nothing spreads when you're inside. They're probably seeing infinitely more car accident deaths, too. Life's risky, and you're not comparing honestly.

[1] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-mortalit...

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

#379

Post by camelite » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #342

darkwater wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in the US for seasonal flu the deaths estimation [1] for this season are 24k-60k deaths, for covid19 is 60k-240k, where 60k is applying lockdown, not "everybody work normally". And obviously they are on top of the typical deaths. [1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/09/its-difficult-to-grasp-t...

The German survey showed an actual fatality rate of 0.37% vs the flu at 0.1%. We know herd immunity is in the cards due to the lack of mutation of COVID, and that kicks in at 60-70% of the population. The German study also suggested up to 15% of people may already have it, so we can further reduce this number (an incremental 45-55% of the population getting infected) -- So, if we run some simple arithmetic, we'll see…

Firstly, the German study analysed one small particularly hard hit town, so how you are extrapolating this to "people" in general is puzzling.

Secondly, there is a very wide range of reported fatality rates, with myriad factors known and unknown, so why you've chosen the lowest one globally (which, by the by, has always been an outlier and in any case is edging up past 1%) as the "actual" rate is, again, puzzling.

Finally, you are making a giant but unfortunately common logical error in using these already questionable death counts to make the case for an overreaction without attending to the obvious fact that without this "overreaction" every town, village and city on Earth would be Bergamo, where army lorries are conscripted to transport the dead from overwhelmed mortuaries, or worse.

Do better friendo.

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

#380

Post by bogomipz » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

rct42 wrote: post #344

bogomipz wrote: post #74

Interesting although it seem as though Singapore's "TraceTogether" app was able to work successfully without any of these APIs no? Tangentially related - Singapore plans to open source their app. There's a few details about how it works here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/26/singapore_tracetoge... Also interesting to read some of the reviews of the app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sg.go…

They've released their open-source version of the app, OpenTrace https://github.com/opentrace-community/ Interesting in the Android version they request ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION (i.e., access to GPS) instead of ACCESS_COURSE_LOCATION (i.e., access to BLE). They have also include Firebase analytics (which captures city-level location data) into the app as well.

Wouldn't bluetooth be preferable to GPS since GPS requires a direct line of sight? And Singapore being an urban area with underground mass transit and lots of shopping malls I would have though that bluetooth would provide better accuracy of contact/proximity.