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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

#411

Post by jessriedel »

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)

The argument is OK, but fails to mention fact that Singapore's TraceTogether and Stanford's Covid Watch are pursuing a common Bluetooth covid tracing standard that everyone can adopt. So you don't need mass adoption of a single app.

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

#412

Post by dmak »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #152
turdnagel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a pandemic, I think it’s fair to value public safety over privacy. What comes after the pandemic is a separate concern and discussion.

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

#413

Post by lwf »

jschwartzi wrote: post #207
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.

Bluetooth 5.1 devices can do both distance and direction, so if you have a bunch of beacons you can determine your location to sub-meter accuracy.

Realistically, what does sub-metre accuracy help with "evil" (catch-all for all non-disease-related) surveillance that, say, a 5-10m is insufficient for?

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

#414

Post by vanniv »

zajio1am wrote: post #410
vanniv wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Influenza's 0.1% isn't from clinically significant cases. Influenza is 0.1% from estimated total cases. Here's the CDC's preliminary in-season influenza report for this year, showing 39,000,000 - 56,000,000 estimated cases, 18,000,000 - 26,000,000 medical visits, and ultimately 24,000-62-000 deaths (0.061% - 0.1107%) https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... These preliminary estimates are rough…

Well, the link says 39-56 M illnesses, which means symptomatic infections (although some of them may be not diagnosed by doctor), while the 0.37% for covid-19 is just number of seroconversions (including asymptomatic infections, which are not considered illness), so not a comparable number. With 39M-56M estimated cases, 24k-62k deaths and 330M population, you have 0.06%-0.11% fatality rate and 0.007%-0.018% mortality…

Less than 40% of cases result in any visit to a medical professional (# medical visits is about 0.4-0.5 of # cases, but some people will need >1 medical visit)

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

#416

Post by sitkack »

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…

Both Apple and Google have the exact location for all users for all time. Both can tell you right now, who you have been in contact with and how many folks they in turn have been in contact with.

They aren't building anything new, in fact, this is much less than they already have.

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

#417

Post by zajio1am »

I guess court order could be used to get daily tracking keys from you regardless of covid-19 status, so it could be used for tracking for other cases.

While it does not directly encode position, with sufficient large network of bluetooth trackers on key places (like mass transit stations) one can be tracked sufficiently well by that.

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

#419

Post by clairity »

pow_ext wrote: post #402
clairity wrote: post #186

we need to collectively take a step back and put this pandemic into proper perspective so we don't fall for privacy and liberty erosions like this. the panic is unproductive and dangerous to our civil rights. for context, roughly 8000 people die per day in the US. the virus has killed 2 days worth of people in the US in the 80 days of known infection, and probably ~100 days of undiagnosed infection. so covid has kill…

How can you know the names of the people with beacons in the stores

you don't need to know the names, just that two bluetooth-enabled devices were in close proximity in a given time window. you'd do all the processing on the device to maximize privacy.

each device would record beacons (which could be fixed, active bluetooth devices rather than just passive beacons) on entry and exit for relevant locations (like grocery stores). you'd tell your device when you got symptoms and give permission to upload the relevant location/time pairs (but no personal id) in the last N days to a research database (not hosted by google, amazon, ibm, and the like).

with user permission, other devices would subscribe to such data for a given region(s), which would be downloaded periodically to the device. the device wouldthen determins if you've had any crossings with known location/time pairs and alert the user.

no need to share extraneous personally identifying info with giant third-parties and potentially with (hidden) state actors. this cuts apple and google out of the data collection game, especially from making it part of the underlying OS, which is particularly dangerous.

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

#420

Post by dannyw »

jessriedel wrote: post #411
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)

The argument is OK, but fails to mention fact that Singapore's TraceTogether and Stanford's Covid Watch are pursuing a common Bluetooth covid tracing standard that everyone can adopt. So you don't need mass adoption of a single app.

We worked on a project relating to TraceTogether. We could not get AndroidiOS interoperability to work well.
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