This gets thrown around a lot, but actually carriers have only a rough idea of your location. Their network-side location information is not accurate enough to determine who you have been in close contact with (otherwise we wouldn't need BT based solutions for contact tracing). Depending on the cell size, it can be off by miles.
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Apple and Google Partner on Opt-In COVID-19 Contact Tracing Technology to Be Added to iPhone and Android Smartphones
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You misunderstand. All that's being transmitted to the servers is a list of IDs. Not their timestamps or locations.
So once you learn you're infected, you use the app to submit the IDs your phone broadcast over the last, say, five days, rotating every 15 minutes. That's 480 IDs with nothing else attached to them.
All the server can infer is that those are the IDs you've broadcast. If you put them in random order (which makes no difference to the functionality of the service), you can't even tell which ID was broadcast when (assuming phones don't also just swap IDs at random times close to 15 minutes, rather than exactly 15).
That can't be used to create a movement profile of you, unless you believe some super powerful secret government agency has antennas that defy basic laws of physics and thus can track every bluetooth device in the country, but somehow not already track every cell phone
Passively, yes because what you’re describing is cell tower triangulation. But if they want to, they can ping your phone to find a precise location with its GPS.
I would like the ability to see where I've been; see it in iOS Maps. Something I can view in Maps whenever I want to see it. This info could be on a layer I can export. Perhaps overlay exported paths to see where and when they overlap.
Our smartphones should be used to track and contain a virus.
Our smartphones should be used to track and contain a virus.
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They are getting the IDs of all people who upload theirs. Then they can easily correlate them. Then de-anonymize the indivduals using the IP address. And voila, they have a complete contact graph.
No, I mean a simple flag that would skip the "Do you really want to upload your keys" question. And BTW, the government could also seize your phone, extract the keys (both your own and the ones the phone has detected), and effectively get a complete list of people you have recently been in contact with.
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No they can't. The carriers have no access to the device's GPS hardware or location APIs. The only situation where they may get GPS-based location data is if you make an emergency call (since modern phones are programmed to provide the information in this case).
Contact Tracing on one hand is innocent; you ask who someone's been in touch with and them them who they've been in touch with...
Enabling this on an API and Bluetooth level is straight up Dark Knight Rises, and we don't have Batman looking out for us.
The medical community have estimated the R0 to be at 2.2, again there is no definitive number yet, so I am not sure where you are getting your R0 of 3, please explain?
I understand how exponential number work, no requirement to explain. But you have over simplified it with making wide assumptions that the death rate is 100% once infected. There are people who get infected and are asymptomatic that means even in your scenario three people get infected that does not mean they are doomed, it just means these asymptomatic people go on they merry life infecting others who may also be asymptomatic while some may get ill and recover without hospitalization and others may get severe and some may be out on ventilators and some on them may still die, there is no definitive. What transpired in Wuhan, Italy, Spain, New York, etc still require investigation you are making claims that you know for certain what occurred there.
FYI did you know that ventilators can also kill COVID-19 patients as it goes counter to a cytokines storm and makes things worse. There have also been reports that some recovered patients have been reinfected, are you able to explain that if these individuals have antibodies. If I am a user of substance abuse and get a cold/flu and go to the hospital where they incorrectly label it as COVID-19 to boost numbers and predictions, I have willfully placed my immune system in a determent position. That is to say that I could have easily landed in the emergency room for overdosing, once again these are examples as to we have no definitive yet what most people lack is nutrition that would aid their immune system to do what nature intended, yes you can be over the age of 70 and survive COVID-19 if you feed your body with the right nutrients. Stop spreading FUD.
I'm not sure if we're just quibbling over the word "access" or what, but your carrier can ping your device's GPS to determine your precise location. It is done all the time and has been done for years. Here's one example from 2012:
Commonwealth v. Almonor - Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Opinion
mass_supreme_court_opinion-almonor.pdf
My issue with this whole thing, assuming I’ve understood the implementation correctly, is that anonymity depends on the assumption that all of us come into contact with more people than we can keep track of.
But for some of us, that’s not true at all.
In the past month, the only person I talked to face to face, albeit over twenty feet away, was my neighbor. If this app lets me know I came into contact with someone with Covid, I would reasonably count on her because there’s been nobody else in my vicinity, assuming all in my family were to test negative. Even when things were normal, I spent most weeks just making the school run and coming into contact with a very limited number of people, most of whom I know in my relatively small community.
Getting back to my neighbor and her hypothetical Covid positive status pinging me “anonymously” via the app, if I were like some of the neighbors I’ve lived among previously, I’d go banging on her door and cuss her out. I have known and unfortunately lived among people who are that primitive and aggressive. They don’t think deeply at all. About anything. Ever. They just react. Their lives are a series of reactions and over-reactions to slights real and perceived.
Forget law enforcement or the government, vigilante behavior is going to be pretty rough. Even if really, people still can’t reasonably pinpoint who the person is, they are going to assume or think they can. Some people are bullheaded like that. They’re going to get a notification from the app, think back on the people they talked to and go off half cocked and make trouble over it.
We already got people using social media to “name and shame” people over gross assumptions about all sorts of things, like people with hidden disabilities who rightfully use handicapped parking spaces. Really just a moment’s thought and some courtesy could avoid trouble but some people are incapable of implementing those things.
The great wide world does not consist of wise and educated calm reasonable people. If we struggle with reading comprehension here on a tech forum, can you imagine what the reaction of the greater populations of “Karens” and their male counterparts is going to be?
That is one potential drawback I see to all of this. But even my reading comprehension is not all I could wish it to be. I am certainly open to correction.
But for some of us, that’s not true at all.
In the past month, the only person I talked to face to face, albeit over twenty feet away, was my neighbor. If this app lets me know I came into contact with someone with Covid, I would reasonably count on her because there’s been nobody else in my vicinity, assuming all in my family were to test negative. Even when things were normal, I spent most weeks just making the school run and coming into contact with a very limited number of people, most of whom I know in my relatively small community.
Getting back to my neighbor and her hypothetical Covid positive status pinging me “anonymously” via the app, if I were like some of the neighbors I’ve lived among previously, I’d go banging on her door and cuss her out. I have known and unfortunately lived among people who are that primitive and aggressive. They don’t think deeply at all. About anything. Ever. They just react. Their lives are a series of reactions and over-reactions to slights real and perceived.
Forget law enforcement or the government, vigilante behavior is going to be pretty rough. Even if really, people still can’t reasonably pinpoint who the person is, they are going to assume or think they can. Some people are bullheaded like that. They’re going to get a notification from the app, think back on the people they talked to and go off half cocked and make trouble over it.
We already got people using social media to “name and shame” people over gross assumptions about all sorts of things, like people with hidden disabilities who rightfully use handicapped parking spaces. Really just a moment’s thought and some courtesy could avoid trouble but some people are incapable of implementing those things.
The great wide world does not consist of wise and educated calm reasonable people. If we struggle with reading comprehension here on a tech forum, can you imagine what the reaction of the greater populations of “Karens” and their male counterparts is going to be?
That is one potential drawback I see to all of this. But even my reading comprehension is not all I could wish it to be. I am certainly open to correction.
It's not going to be anonymous the moment anyone using this tests positive for CoV.
• The cellular providers know who is using the phone.
• Google knows who is using Android
• Apple knows who is using their iPhones
• And the place that tests you to find out you're positive for CoV has your identity which will be reported back to the motherships to "make the app more accurate".
It's impossible for this scheme to be anonymous
• The cellular providers know who is using the phone.
• Google knows who is using Android
• Apple knows who is using their iPhones
• And the place that tests you to find out you're positive for CoV has your identity which will be reported back to the motherships to "make the app more accurate".
It's impossible for this scheme to be anonymous
Contact Tracing on one hand is innocent; you ask who someone's been in touch with and them them who they've been in touch with...
Enabling this on an API and Bluetooth level is straight up Dark Knight Rises, and we don't have Batman looking out for us.
It was actually the second of the Batman Trilogy ‘The Dark Knight’ where they were trying to locate The Joker... But I totally agree with your sentiment.
In the words of Mr Fox, this is wrong.
Can you please describe what exactly you mean by "ping your device's GPS"? Devices only contain a GPS receiver. It cannot be "pinged" by a carrier. This only works in the movies.I'm not sure if we're just quibbling over the word "access" or what, but your carrier can ping your device's GPS to determine your precise location. It is done all the time and has been done for years. Here's one example from 2012:
Commonwealth v. Almonor - Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Opinion
mass_supreme_court_opinion-almonor.pdfwww.eff.org
Also, please provide a quote of what exactly you're referring to in this document.
What you're saying cannot be done is done literally every day by law enforcement across the United States. It requires a warrant, but it is 100% technologically possible and has been for many years.
As for the quote in the document, it's the very beginning of the opinion:
Again, this is a case from 2012. This is utterly commonplace.
They are not "pinging the GPS". They are "pinging" the phone's cellular stack (e.g. by sending a silent SMS), which causes it to respond to the network (otherwise it may be in idle mode to save battery life, in which case the network doesn't necessarily know which cell the phone is in). That still only allows the carrier to learn the rough location based on the cell the user is in, not a precise location as required for contact tracing.
and who cares... don’t commit a crime for starters. Problem solved now deal with Corona.
No, they are pinging the GPS. Did you real the part of the opinion that I quoted that says "The service provider eventually 'pinged' the defendant's cell phone, an action that caused the defendant's cell phone to transmit its real-time global positioning system (GPS) coordinates to the service provider."? Here's a discussion of a Second Circuit opinion from 2016 that talks about Sprint pinging the GPS of the suspect's device:
It's a technique that's existed for maybe a decade now. There are literally countless published legal cases in which this is talked about.
Exactly. No sane person believes that Apple and Google will keep identities private, maintain opt-in or dismantle this once it is activated. It will be leveraged into our lives in countless ways.Contact Tracing on one hand is innocent; you ask who someone's been in touch with and them them who they've been in touch with...
Enabling this on an API and Bluetooth level is straight up Dark Knight Rises, and we don't have Batman looking out for us.
If the document says that, whoever wrote it (presumably a lawyer, not an expert) is wrong.No, they are pinging the GPS. Did you real the part of the opinion that I quoted that says "The service provider eventually 'pinged' the defendant's cell phone, an action that caused the defendant's cell phone to transmit its real-time global positioning system (GPS) coordinates to the service provider."? Here's a discussion of a Second Circuit opinion from 2016 that talks about Sprint pinging the GPS of the suspect's device:
It's a technique that's existed for maybe a decade now. There are literally countless published legal cases in which this is talked about.
Rolling it out, just like China. Except this was all already documented in Rockefeller papers.
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Rahm Emanuel
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Rahm Emanuel
Ok, well I've provided two links to published appellate court cases describing it as pinging the GPS. Do you have some other authority you can provide that says it's doing something else?
How about a technical description how exactly that's supposed to work? I can't very well prove a negative. I gave you a brief description above about the silent SMS method that authorities can use to roughly locate a phone.
In any case, if the carriers can already provide location information with GPS precision, why do you think Google, Apple and others are working on the Bluetooth method?
That’s a dangerous way to think about things (yet a sentiment the NSA would be happy to hear I’m sure).
Technology and privacy can coexist, but all too often doesn’t. There’s no incentive for these companies to respect privacy other than in their marketing, and Google doesn’t even do that. Do they allow anyone to audit their systems for privacy? I’m pretty sure you’d find a trove of concerns and breaches if they did.
People in many countries are already complying with significant restrictions on movement and social distance. I don’t see how these permissions can add to or enhance that.
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Having just read the TechCrunch article I found the piece I didn't get from your description: Each phone keeps a record of the identifiers it has broadcast, and of the identifiers it has seen. When tested positive for disease, the user can agree to share their full list of identifiers which gets broadcast to the world. Everyone else downloads that list and checks if they have it in their list of identifiers seen.
So if you test positive and agree to, you are blasting a significant amount of data into the world. It doesn't sound like the interactions are stored anywhere centrally which will make nefarious use of that information more difficult which is good.
And, of course, if we test positive we can each decide if we feel the greater good outweighs 2 weeks of our privacy.
Still interested to learn more of the details when I find the time, but it's not a bad implementation based on this.
Ever hear why Native Americans died by the MILLIONS because Europeans brought smallpox which the Native's immune systems have never seen before? Well this is similar. The COVID-19 is very different compared to other cold viruses and our immune systems are rookies fighting this one. That's why the mortality is so much higher.
Again, it's because this virus is so different we don't have any sort of immunity. Immunity is multifaceted. Even though someone doesn't get the flu shot they don't die easily from the flu as their immune system has seen a similar flu virus before and kind of has the know how to fight it.
I'm all for this providing that once the vaccine is out, it is disabled completely. We need to open the economy up again. We don't need a 1930's type of depression or worse because of fear of 1984.
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