Apple and Google are launching a joint COVID-19 tracing tool for iOS and Android
Apple and Google's engineering teams have banded together to create a decentralized contact tracing tool that will help individuals determine whether they have been exposed to someone with COVID-19.
Contact tracing is a useful tool that helps public health authorities track the spread of the disease and inform the potentially exposed so that they can get tested. It does this by identifying and 'following up with' people who have come into contact with a COVID-19 affected person.
The first phase of the project is an API that public health agencies can integrate into their own apps. The next phase is a system level contact tracing system that will work across iOS and Android devices on an opt-in basis.
The system uses on-board radios on your device to transmit an anonymous ID over short ranges — using Bluetooth beaconing. Servers relay your last 14 days of rotating IDs to other devices which search for a match. A match is determined based on a threshold of time spent and distance maintained between two devices.
If a match is found with another user that has told the system that they have tested positive, you are notified and can take steps to be tested and to self quarantine.
[...] you run into technical problems like Bluetooth power suck, privacy concerns about centralized data collection and the sheer effort it takes to get enough people to install the apps to be effective.
Two Phase Plan
To fix these issues, Google and Apple teamed up to create an interoperable API that should allow the largest number of users to adopt it, if they choose.
The first phase, a private proximity contact detection API, will be released in mid-May by both Apple and Google for use in apps on iOS and Android.
[...] The second phase of the project is to bring even more efficiency and adoption to the tracing tool by bringing it to the operating system level. There would be no need to download an app, users would just opt-in to the tracing right on their device. The public health apps would continue to be supported, but this would address a much larger spread of users.
This phase, which is slated for the coming months, would give the contract tracing tool the ability to work at a deeper level, improving battery life, effectiveness and privacy. If its handled by the system, then every improvement in those areas — including cryptographic advances — would benefit the tool directly.
[...]
You can find more information about the contact tracing API on Google’s post here and on Apple’s page here including specifications.
Alternate source: Apple, Google Bring Covid-19 Contact-Tracing to 3 Billion People
So it's like a dating hookup proximity app for covid-19?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:38AM (3 children)
Claim not supported by citation.
The linked article makes two claims:
1) Contact tracing is not effective IF the number of asymptomatic cases is more than 30%. This virus has an asymptomatic case rate of roughly 25%.
2) Social distancing is important too. Nobody is saying it isn't. Contact tracing can't do it all. We aren't going to all be crowding into standing room only nightclubs again any time soon. But with contact tracing, we can at least go back to work. Unless you work in one of those nightclubs.
Finally, as a counterexample, contact tracing seems to have been the main "secret sauce" employed by South Korea in stifling the outbreak without the need for extreme social distancing measures.
Right now Google *already* tracks almost everyone's movement, if you have an Android phone with location on (that's most people), and occasionally even if you don't (depending on exactly what else you do). Between Google, the phone companies, and law enforcement (e.g. with license plate readers) most of the surveillance infrastructure is already in place. We just need to put it to work doing something useful for a change.
I am sure the app will be opt-in. Google, for all their privacy-destroying efforts, still allows you to disable location services, and this is pretty much baked into the EULAs. I will be happy to opt in to the app for the duration of this pandemic, and then I will delete it again afterward.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:40PM
But with contact tracing, we can at least go back to work. Unless you work in one of those nightclubs.
Extorting people like that is probable.
However, be that as it may, contact tracing is not only overrated, the centralized model and generic name given the project belie the real purpose.
This contact tracing framework isn't about SARS-CoV-2 despite what some of the headlines might imply. Read down through the actual press releases [apple.com]. Even the framework documentation calls it a "Contact Tracing Framework" generically and not a temporary framework or a "COVID-19" framework:
This is about creating a centralized, smartphone-based, generalized contact tracing framework. There is nothing in the scope notes limiting it to the duration of the pandemic nor to just SARS-CoV-2-related epidemiology. This pandemic is just the right excuse for Apple and Google to pull these plans off the shelf and get people to voluntarily assume "The Position". This service could have been made in a distributed, decentralized manner if data mining were not the hidden goal. Google is not going to change its main business model over night and suddenly do that.
Between Alphabet/Google and Apple, they control about 100% of the smartphone market. Once this surveillance infrastructure [jacobinmag.com] is in place on as good as 100% of smartphones it will collect plenty of data. The amassed centralized data will be too big a temptation for the data miners to leave be and they will start dipping into it after the pandemac has passed. Then from there flood gates open. Again, if this were about dealing with this pandemic, the scope would be limited. If this were about privacy, and not control and surveillance, then the framework would be decentralized and distributed.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:54PM
The linked article makes two claims:
1) Contact tracing is not effective IF the number of asymptomatic cases is more than 30%. [...]
Correct. And thus contact tracing is ineffective for the SARS-CoV-2 virus even if it were not already too widely spread: The current studies are showing that the portion of asymptomatic cases is over 50% [bgr.com]. However, it is looking like it could be much higher.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @11:54PM
Your statement:
" Google, for all their privacy-destroying efforts, still allows you to disable location services"
FIXED version:
Google, for all their privacy-destroying efforts, still allows you to THINK YOU CAN disable location services
Until you have audited all of their code, I'll go with my version ...