[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-researchers-launch-location...
"We are working around the clock to finalise our protocol reference documents and reference implementation, to open source what we have built, so that others may deploy their own flavours of TraceTogether - each implementing the BlueTrace protocol. We appreciate your patience in the meantime."
For the majority of people if they go to https://www.google.com/maps/timeline they'll have a tracker of everywhere they've visited and the time they were in each location.
If you could take people's accounts who've been infected and give them the ability to opt-into sharing this information you could have a pretty good source of information about the locations where they dwelled for long periods of time and who should go into self-isolation.
One of the gestures I think Google could make in this fight is to allow people to opt into that data sharing on a strictly limited basis. I’d opt in if it was only going to be provided for the purposes of medical infection contact tracing while this pandemic is rife.
Just a matter of companies buying/implementing them.
I guess it's not more well-known because it's not in the stores interests to publicize it.
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 US, I'd much rather use a protocol like TraceTogether's Bluetrace that goes out of its way to preserve privacy, than adopt an actually-privacy-violating centralized approach where the government simply gathers everyone's location data and processes it centrally (Israel's approach, for example).
>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.
I have never said that so I am not sure what to tell you. The only method that works is quarantine, remote control is a copout to address the lack of contact with the population. Moreover, what I am addressing is how the tracking is NEVER going to go away even after the emergency is gone.
> Israel's approach for example
On this topic, Israel tech companies are right now sending out business proposals to the Italian government to try and implement their methods (viz. https://www.ilgazzettino.it/nordest/primopiano/coronavirus_z... last thing Europe needs during this crysis is ANOTHER political mindset shift towards walls and a iron boot.
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 to do so?
It's fine, but as Jean Yang pointed out on Twitter, no-one would ordinarily call disclosing everyone you'd shared a location with over weeks "privacy-preserving". And once you've done it for some large fraction of infected people, you end up with a country-wide social graph built up, even though you weren't conducting mass surveillance in the usual meaning.
It's a loss of privacy either way (whether done via location or Bluetooth contact). I'd rather just have the conversation about how we've decided to suspend physical metadata privacy to combat the pandemic, than act like the Singapore model is going to preserve it.
Why does this imply such invasive measures?
https://www.tracetogether.gov.sg/common/privacystatement
What data is collected? Are you able to see my personal data?
The only data that we collect is your mobile number, so that MOH can contact you more quickly if you were in close proximity to a COVID-19 case.
With your consent, TraceTogether exchanges Bluetooth proximity data with nearby phones running the same app. However, this data is anonymised and encrypted, and does not reveal your identity or the other person's identity. Also, this data is stored only on the user’s phone. Should MOH need the data for contact tracing, they will seek your consent to share it with them.
That's the definition of PII and will eventually be abused for purposes other than emergency contact.
What would be useful is a common standard for Bluetooth transmission so all these apps could talk to each other.
I agree with this and your sentiment, but I think it is misplaced in this instance.
As I understand it, the TraceTogether app collects (and stores locally), information on other users running the TraceTogether app nearby. If our government's contact tracers contact us, we can provide the information, and it can help in contact tracing. This seems to me to be at or near the minimum amount of information collection necessary to fulfil the function. Assuming voluntary widespread adoption, it is useful, and can be uninstalled at any time once the crisis blows over.
I would much rather have a system like this than to be indiscriminately tracked and lose more privacy potentially indefinitely. The tracking can't be indefinite if I'm asked for permission, because if I don't think there's good reason for it I'll just say no. And if I'm worried the app's privacy measures aren't good enough and it'll be abused, I'll just uninstall it.
Consent is the key!
Also - its really disturbing that a few years ago, Apple created an update where you cant turn off wifi or bluetooth - you can now only "pause it"
But there has not been a look into proving that it is actually OFF when your little soft icon is grey...
Not to mention any number of actors could have already been tracking this signal for years. It's the nature of how bluetooth devices broadcast their presence.
Until government makes it mandatory.
This would be a point if near-omnipresent camera feeds were reduced in favor of using this.
But the much more likely outcome is that this will only end up increasing overall surveillance capabilities, not reign them in.
Yea, but it's much worse than non-shitty suggestions. Obviously if you pick the shittiest option anything will look good.
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.
These privacy exceptions all affected goverments are talking about (Italy being a great example, viz. Veneto region governor asking for a change in privacy laws the other day) are not going to magically disappear once the coast is clear, just like post 9/11 emergency laws still being used in the US.
I believe there are other ways to help people and that, if you are a government that claims having to resort to remote control its popoulation, maybe your power is either insufficient for your secret expansion goals or you're an inefficient populist.
Every (western) government publicly hates the Chinese government but they do seem to have wet dreams about the population control bit, especially when backed by corporations.
It's like hating gunpowder exists because people can make bullets and fight wars with it.
Just for now. Uninstall when the pandemic clears.
Thank you for posting this!
That being said though, the app is absolute garbage on iPhone. Obviously not really their fault, but needing to have the app actively on for it to work is absolutely going to lead to people not bothering to turning it on.
Assuming Apple's policies are in fact preventing them from running in the background, does Apple have a mechanism to grant them an exception for this use case? Does someone have a contact at Apple who could reach out to them?
Looking for contributors!
I suspect the bigger issue is people don't want to be told by an app that they need to go get tested.
Come to think of it, cities like New York could push it as part of a bigger, more comprehensive covid app...
It is not a mobile app. You export your data from Google (thanks GDPR!), and filter out personally identifiable data points before submitting. We also let you know exactly who is about to use your donated data (we only allow academic researchers to have access), and give you advance notice so you can delete it if you don’t want your data to be used in a particular project.
We are MIT licensed and are figuring out how to make data donation safe via UX and engineering. We need all the help we can get - even if it’s just feedback. Feel reach out! Nessup@gmail.com
E.g. In Switzerland this was done manually (by medical staff mostly i think) in the very beginning, but they gave up very quickly on it because of lack of resources.
