Is contact tracing technology categorically different from mass surveillance technology?
Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
71–80 of 484 posts
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#72Pretty good illustration of how private and secure contact tracing can work here: https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/ Not sure whether that's what this implementation would look like.
I'm not a security expert. However, this part looks worrying: > alice can also hide messages from times she wants to keep private If there's a need for this, doesn't that imply that the scheme does not actually keep Alice's privacy in all situations? Furthermore: > the random messages give the hospital NO INFO on where Alice was This seems to assume that the hospital (or anyone with access to the data, such as govern…
This definitely isn't "private". It's just obfuscated.
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#73Does this then allow us to run this in the background on iphone. The Danish and Norwegian governments are looking at using a GPS+Bluetooth based version because iPhone is so common and not able to work with Bluetooth when the app is not active is their argument. Also based on a centralized server. My hope was apple would in this circumstance allow Bluetooth to work differently so avoid unnecessary location data.
Of course you can use Bluetooth in the background. You just have to enable Background Location Access permission as a user.
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Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#74Interesting 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.gov.tech.bl...
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#75Thinking big, if this works against covid: could it later be used to severely limit or eliminate diseases such as the common cold and the flu?
That would be an incredible win for humanity.
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#76This project may be necessary to enable fair elections in the United States and other democratic countries through November. On the other hand if built improperly it could usher in a 1984-style future with gerrymandering, vote-rigging, and huge increases in surveillance based government suppression. When the government is granted emergency powers it almost never gives them back.
Please do not fuck this up.
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
We haven't gotten rid of it, it still exists. It just isn't being used right now. Getting rid of it would be to abolish it entirely, and instead require people to voluntarily consent in the future. (And if you can't get people to agree to it, perhaps that should tell you something.) "needed" isn't even a factor here. An involuntary mechanism for contact or location tracing that's accessible to governmental authoritie…
> It just isn't being used right now. The American public exercised their power to elect politicians who'd end the draft as the Vietnam War got progressively more unpopular. It's well within our powers, if we care enough.
Is it, in fact, "well within our powers", or do you just believe it is? I don't, in general, believe "we could take this power away from government if we wanted to" is true without an existence proof.
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#78It's quite horrible if it becomes a standard API. What a gold mine it is for ad business to be able to tell which groups of people are together. It can be used to track 'idea spreading' as well.
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#79This 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 advertisement will prevent a world where there are different contact tracing apps, none of which can see each other. Doing this at the platform level will enable enough density of installs to make this effective at scale.
Re: Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology
#80This has a very serious potential to be misused to target an individual for nefarious purposes.