Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#411

Post by mackrevinack » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

nicetryguy wrote: post #97

cactus2093 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we'll see how this plays out, perhaps it will be tragically ironic. The majority of people don't ever think about this and are happy to give their location info to Google constantly all day long. This protocol is in almost all ways much less intrusive and more protective of privacy, and the upside for society is potentially high. It should be a complete no-brainer that everyone who is ok using google or apple map…

It all seemed so innocent and helpful a decade ago... Free GPS and navigation services have a price. I doubt many people are going back to Garmin anytime soon. Just the way it is now.

any time I've used garmin over the years it had been only slightly better then useless.

there are other options though. ive been using openstreetmap for about 4 years and have only found the need to use Google once in all that time. although with openstreetmap being crowd sources it really depends on how much work has been done in a particular area but in my country its pretty decent

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#412

Post by boudin » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #239

I have to say, working at Apple and knowing all the hard work that goes into this and making sure your data stays private while also being able to combat this disease, it's very frustrating to read a lot of the comments here. I can understand why the public is skeptical, but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge. The anti-vax movement is a…

Apple doesn't make it easy to be liked overall. For example, trying to get 30% of a company revenue to publish an app on ios store and push the arrogance all the way to ask a company to change its business model is insane. I'm not gonna go all the way to ask to be able to build or test things in containers, but at least do it easily in virtual machines legally without having to buy or rent some apple hardware for no good reason. Why not even being able to build ios apps outside of macos? There's no technical reason not to be able to do so neither.

For me, the discrepancy between apple marketing around the products and how it feels being stuck in the past as soon as having to build and support anything related to apple makes the whole company not likeable and not trustworthy.

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#413

Post by mackrevinack » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

antipaul wrote: post #50

cm2187 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple.

You can’t put Apple and Google in the same bucket when it comes to privacy. Sure, neither is probably perfect, but only one of them is an egregious violator whose business model depends on surveillance capitalism

apple is closed source and extremely secretive so i will keep putting them in the same bucket thanks

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#414

Post by tomp » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:52 AM UTC

fenomas wrote: post #366

abtinf wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find companies with public facing employees that give talks at meetups and conferences easier to trust? In other words, you trust Facebook, Google, NSA, and Congress more than Apple? Seems like an odd standard.

I said P⇒Q; you're asking if that means I believe !P⇒!Q. That is: I'm not saying a company is trustworthy if-and-only-if its employees speak publicly. I'm saying that my mental model of what a company would or wouldn't do internally is strongly influenced by what I know about its employees.

The alternative is that you believe !P⇒Q, in which case you could have easily just said Q

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#415

Post by grey-area » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

Someone wrote: post #156

The title of this article is incorrect. FTA: “Apple […] and […] Google on Monday said they would ban the use of location tracking in apps that use a new contact tracing system the two are building ”. So, contact tracing apps that don’t use that system, such as the one from the UK ( https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52441428 ) still would be allowed to do location tracking.

But will anyone use them? I wouldn't trust an app which has been outsourced and feeds data to palantir:

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/04/nhs-opts-f...

https://www.hsj.co.uk/technology-and-innovation/exclusive-wo...

The Apple/Google solution sounds much better to me - no central datastore.

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#416

Post by Legogris » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:54 AM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #390

Legogris wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's arguably a lot more evidence against Google than Apple here. But Apple did lie about their involvement, or even knowledge of, the PRISM program. Snowden leaks. I highly recommend Glenn Grennwald's book No Place to Hide if you're not interested in digging though sources yourself. Even against their will, companies with capabilities can and have been compelled by government agencies to go against their promises…

I've read Permanent Record by Edward Snowden. It doesn't get more detailed than that. There is nothing in the book that indicates that Google's implementation of the contact tracing spec would deviate from the spec either through incompetence or malice. You're making vague, unsubstantiated claims about how this could be compromised. Even if there is a bug that allows such apps to collect location info, that has nothi…

I'm not arguing for the existence of any specific deliberate conspiracy. So please don't misrepresent what I'm saying as conspiracy theory.

Still, there are multiple plausible ways in which these apps and systems can be compromised by malicious actors (from any nationality). The risks are significantly larger than they need to, to a large degree due to lack of transparency and verifiability, and significant trust elements.

These risks are not inherent in the design of the contact-tracing system or the specific companies themselves, but they are inherent in the way smartphone apps are typically developed and distributed to end-users on mainstream platforms today.

Then on top of that, past and ongoing incidents obliterates my personal confidence that large U.S. tech companies will live up to their promises.

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#417

Post by tomp » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:58 AM UTC

jjgreen wrote: post #11

AJRF wrote: post #3

I've been wondering about the UK contact tracing app because they seem to be deliberately misleading saying that data is secure on the phone, yet it's a centralised model, and they are using bullshit terms like "clinically secure algorithm" to describe the one-time codes; Is the source code of these apps something that could be FOI requested from NHSx seeing as it is publicly funded by the tax payer? Also they've alr…

Given that Palantir is involved, I'd not touch it with a long stick https://tech.newstatesman.com/coronavirus/palantir-covid19-d...

Can anyone point to some articles of how Palantir is abusing data?

The reason I ask is, I also thought that it's "just supreme evil" until I listened to a podcast with Thiel (Dave Rubin podcast) recently... In it, he said that he started Palantir as an experiment, what can be done against organised crime/terrorism while respecting civil liberties and privacy. His argument was, that we do need to stop terrorism, because people (not HN crowd, but the public at large) are obviously not willing to compromise safety for privacy, so each terrorist attack results in privacy- & civil liberties-curtailing laws - so the question is, can we use data/ML/etc. to safeguard our society while preserving as much privacy & liberty as we can.

But I've almost no real (and insider) info about Palantir to judge whether that's actually what the organisation is, 10 years or so later.

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#418

Post by flukus » Tue, May 05, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #239

I have to say, working at Apple and knowing all the hard work that goes into this and making sure your data stays private while also being able to combat this disease, it's very frustrating to read a lot of the comments here. I can understand why the public is skeptical, but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge. The anti-vax movement is a…

> but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge

Why do you assume we ever had that trust? Corporations and Government have never had personal data on such a scale before and we've never had such little control over this data. Especially with google, your expecting us to trust a spyware company.

> The anti-vax movement is a perfect example where the collective work of thousands of people over decades to save millions of lives just gets tossed aside because some celebrity 'feels' like there's a connection that isn't there, and in the process

Anti-vaxers have been around as long as vaccinations have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy#History

I'd say this trust has never existed, there was just an illusion that it was because we couldn't see into others bubbles so easily.

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#419

Post by chimprich » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:00 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #195

chimprich wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schneier's a security expert, not an epidemiology expert. I don't think I'm going to put much weight in his opinion. The UK's epidemiology and behavioural teams have some confidence that this app will have an effect. It doesn't need to be perfectly effective to be useful. Even a small reduction in R is very helpful.

To be clear: Sage thinks it will work, but we're not told who is on Sage not which of them think this will work. For all we know this is Cummings not understanding any of the science.

For what it's worth, I was thinking of developing an app on similar principles a couple of months ago and I talked to at one of the Sage people. They were enthusiastic about it. There have also been papers modelling the effect.

I don't like Cummings' politics but he is a smart guy. I think he'd follow the science.

Re: Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system

#420

Post by rorykoehler » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:02 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #239

I have to say, working at Apple and knowing all the hard work that goes into this and making sure your data stays private while also being able to combat this disease, it's very frustrating to read a lot of the comments here. I can understand why the public is skeptical, but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge. The anti-vax movement is a…

Companies shouldn't be allow to become as rich and powerful as Apple. We're supposed to live in a democratic system. Corporate power on the scale of FAANG is the antithesis of democracy.