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Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

bluetrace.io

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Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#61

Post by alkonaut »

tomcooks wrote: post #27
mshroyer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is needlessly cynical. TraceTogether uses client-side logging so as to leave data in the hands of the users up until it's actually needed for contact tracing. Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm not sure what to tell you. Otherwise, apps may go a long way to improve the speed and accuracy of contact tracing. Here in the…

Cynical for sure, don't know about that "needlessly" given it's an endless fight where everytime you give up a right it's taken away forever. This time they give you the opensource bit, next time it's "a matter of emergency", then they stop asking and just punish you if you don't comply. >Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm n…

> Moreover, what I am addressing is how the tracking is NEVER going to go away even after the emergency is gone.

Wouldn’t people just stop using any tracking applications once there is no tracking needed?

The way I see it is so long as there is a pandemic we have no freedom anyway. It might seem like tracking your citizens is infringing a freedom, but if the option is house arrest I don’t mind.

Any government that would be ready to monitor everyone all the time for no obvious reason isn’t democratic. I trust my government because I live in a functioning democracy. I wouldn’t trust the Chinese government, or even the Hungarian one, and I‘d have second thoughts about trusting the US govt to do the right thing. But most democracies should be able to use technology to provide more freedom in this situation, not less. It’s a true test of a democracy to do this right. But not trying of fear of a perpetual big brother society I think is the wrong choice.

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#62

Post by Proziam »

hrasyid wrote: post #56
Proziam wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hope is that people don't lose sight of the long term in spite of the short term suffering we may experience. You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever. How many movements would have been impossible if a local government could spy on everyone to break it up before it even begins? I'm thankful we didn't have the same technology we have now during the civil rights…

> You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever With an app like tracetogether, you can just uninstall it after the pandemic, right? No need to surrender your rights forever.

Until the government decides that it's in the public's best interest that such an application be installed on every phone, and non-removable.

We already have NSA / Tech company "collaboration" so this is hardly a huge step in terms of tech or privacy invasion. It would just be the next step.

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#64

Post by groby_b »

tomcooks wrote: post #27
mshroyer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is needlessly cynical. TraceTogether uses client-side logging so as to leave data in the hands of the users up until it's actually needed for contact tracing. Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm not sure what to tell you. Otherwise, apps may go a long way to improve the speed and accuracy of contact tracing. Here in the…

Cynical for sure, don't know about that "needlessly" given it's an endless fight where everytime you give up a right it's taken away forever. This time they give you the opensource bit, next time it's "a matter of emergency", then they stop asking and just punish you if you don't comply. >Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm n…

"The only method that works is quarantine"

Literally nobody in the epi community believes that. Would you please state your credentials, or cite a credible source for that statement? (For the opposite, please do read takes from Trevor Bedford, Mark Lipsitch, Carl Bergstrom, Andy Slavitt or really pretty much anybody in the field)

We (the US) are currently in a state were suppression is the only prudent tool. As SK has shown, contact tracing & testing help a lot once you're not completely inundated by cases (and actually have a meaningful supply of equipment)

Yes, there are privacy concerns. Work on them. Address them. But blanket statements like "only quarantine works" are extremely detrimental to public health efforts - the last thing you want is an "all or nothing" mindset

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#65

Post by shadowgovt »

GordonS wrote: post #57
lern_too_spel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everytime you give up a right it's taken away forever. This is tin foil hat nonsense. The US has implemented martial law before. Those rights weren't taken away forever.

Sorry, but we are long past the point of calling out privacy advocates as "tinfoil hat wearers" - just look at everything that came out after Snowden. Beforehand, most people would have derided others for mentioning "such conspiracy nonsense" (I likely would have myself), and yet the truth was wilder than even hard-core, paranoid conspiracy theorists could have dreamt up. Since 9/11 in particular, the Western world h…

Business as usual has come after Snowden; that's the reason people who have a default-antagonistic reaction to any new technology that could be employed by a government for tracking get labeled "tinfoil-hat wearers."

The future of society isn't no surveillance. That's not tractable. Genie's out of the bottle (as this release of a population tracking tool as open source demonstrates). The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it.

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#66

Post by shadowgovt »

mardifoufs wrote: post #43
lern_too_spel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everytime you give up a right it's taken away forever. This is tin foil hat nonsense. The US has implemented martial law before. Those rights weren't taken away forever.

Wasn't the same said after 9/11 and the patriot act? I'd guess it was just a tin foil hat conspiracy to think several three letter agencies would use the provisions from the patriot act to track pretty much all communications? You can't just accuse people of being conspiracy theorists over and over again and tell them that this time would be different because... Reasons? Also, who needs martial law when you can just…

"Every time you give up a right, it's taken away forever" is still hyperbole.

People gave up the right to fly at all after 9/11. That was re-instituted for almost everyone in short order.

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#67

Post by shadowgovt »

Proziam wrote: post #24
mshroyer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is needlessly cynical. TraceTogether uses client-side logging so as to leave data in the hands of the users up until it's actually needed for contact tracing. Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm not sure what to tell you. Otherwise, apps may go a long way to improve the speed and accuracy of contact tracing. Here in the…

> Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm not sure what to tell you. If the result is (another) permanent loss of privacy and freedom akin to the PATRIOT act, then yes. Technology has immense power to do good for people, but only if those who deploy it do so ethically. How many governments around the world can we honestly predict…

Agree to disagree, because my liberty is useless without my life.

Balance can be found. And increasingly, it looks like in the modern era, the balance is found in a situation where the PATRIOT act exists and we find a new normal around its existence.

Which government of more than a few million people do you assume doesn't have a line into monitoring intra- and interstate digital communications in this era?

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#68

Post by shadowgovt »

samstave wrote: post #49
avianlyric wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s tricky without building a phone yourself from opensource hardware and software. At least with Apple, they’re under so much scrutiny you can be fairly confident that if their software was lying it would quickly appear in the news. Finally the above clearly shows that your assertion you can’t turn off the WiFi or Bluetooth radios is false (assuming the software isn’t outright lying, if think that then you should…

No, I didnt understand that the "OFF" meant different things in the control panel vs the settings panel. THAT is "apple software lying" And your point is absurd "If you want a phone you can trust, then you need to build your own phone" Fuck that logic.

That's an old principle, and it is, unfortunately, still true. It all depends on where you want to put the trust slider, but push it far enough in the conservative direction and, yes, you enter "build your own machine from scratch" territory.

How do you know the hardware you use doesn't have a microdot that can bypass the monitoring logic and physically manipulate the radio without the OS's consent?

How do you know the software you're running doesn't embed its own bluetooth stack and use a 0-day exploit to gain physical control over the radio?

Oh, you compiled it yourself? With whose compiler? Are you sure that compiler faithfully adheres to the spec of the language and doesn't know how to embed a bluetooth stack that, etc.

Push the paranoia slider far enough, and you end up having to care about all this stuff.

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#69

Post by shadowgovt »

ivanonymous wrote: post #14
tomcooks wrote: post #12

Can't wait to be tracked by tech developed by a governmental team in the name of safety. Opensource or not a leash is a leash.

I'm curious as a non-expert what's specifically worrying about their privacy model? My intuition is that rapid adoption of a relatively transparent privacy-preseving option could preempt more heavy-handed approaches to what could be a very valuable public health intervention.

Exactly. People are decrying this because it gives governments capabilities, as if decrying its existence changes that capability model or implies that in the absence of this tool and in a state of emergency, governments wouldn't be stuck trying to accomplish the same goals this tool enables using cruder methods that would be more intrusive to people's lives.

It's like hating gunpowder exists because people can make bullets and fight wars with it.

Re: Singapore to Open Source Bluetooth Contact Tracing

#70

Post by GordonS »

shadowgovt wrote: post #65
GordonS wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but we are long past the point of calling out privacy advocates as "tinfoil hat wearers" - just look at everything that came out after Snowden. Beforehand, most people would have derided others for mentioning "such conspiracy nonsense" (I likely would have myself), and yet the truth was wilder than even hard-core, paranoid conspiracy theorists could have dreamt up. Since 9/11 in particular, the Western world h…

Business as usual has come after Snowden; that's the reason people who have a default-antagonistic reaction to any new technology that could be employed by a government for tracking get labeled "tinfoil-hat wearers." The future of society isn't no surveillance. That's not tractable. Genie's out of the bottle (as this release of a population tracking tool as open source demonstrates). The question isn't how to stop it…

> Business as usual has come after Snowden

I can't disagree with that; honestly, it felt like the media and politicians conspired to bury it. Revelation after revelation was made after outlets like The Intercept went through the evidence, yet hardly anything made the mainstream news, and when it did, it was fleeting. The CIA destroyed evidence and lied to congress, but there was little impact.

> The question isn't how to stop it; it's how to live with it

This I disagree with. We've been shown that the supposedly "benevolent" Western governments of today can't be trusted with laws that permit over-arching mass surveillance and the dampening of civil liberties and human rights, and we've seen the inevitable creeping escalations - who knows what a worse government of tomorrow might do?

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