Apple's Exposure Notification System Guide

[prh8]

Curious how many people against this would say it's ok to scream fire in a crowded building? If you're so concerned about your own rights and don't care how it impacts anyone around you.

 

[CarlJ]

You don’t care that the vice president refused to wear a mask while visiting a hospital with COVID19 patients while everybody else in the hospital has to wear a mask (and did so) because he thinks rules don’t apply to him and wearing a mask would make him look weak?

No, see, he didn't wear a mask over his nose and mouth, because he "wanted to be able to look people in the eye". Because he doesn't even get how faces work.

 

[nikusak]

I always laugh when someone says "God given rights" because "God" puts more restrictions on you than the gov't does.

I laugh at all god references because there is no god or gods.

The negative reaction to this Google/Apple effort only shows how insanely stupid and illiterate people are. The solution is great for privacy and any normal person should understand it. The data is utterly useless even for Google, even if they lied to us and tried to profit from it.

Effectively, this is all the data Apple/Google get:

fed10bb4-0b37-4919-a8e3-303c128bd486
ed19eedb-15dc-4312-a68c-a4c27bf73a2c
95dae0b8-86a2-4924-8cc1-b1876a6683a2

(Did you know that Google does not sell data to anyone?)

Yet using Google services, Facebook, Instagram and so on and feeding them highly personal identifiable data is no problem, but an anonymous tracing solution meant to help us with a disastrous global pandemic...no way!!!
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Already from the comments on here I'm wondering how many of the people making them actually read the article.

Nobody, pretty much. Or refused to understand any of it.

 

[Val-kyrie]

No, but you can't get infected if you are not exposed (you aren't going to spontaneously develop the virus), so knowing if you are exposed will tell you if you may have been infected or not. What you are saying is akin to saying being nominated is not the same as winning an award — obviously — but you should want to know because you don't want this award.

No one knows all of the vectors for this virus.

No one knows how to adequately protect against this virus.

N95 won’t protect you because it is not fitted to your face. The virus can and will enter through the gaps. Ask a nurse. That is common knowledge in the health industry.

Cloth mask. The moment it gets moist you are 7x more likely to contract the virus by breathing it in through your cloth mask.

There is no vaccine and there won’t be one for probably another 18 months. I won’t be a guinea pig. Think it is safe. Ask the African American population on whom the US government experimented when first administering the polio vaccine. Yeah, the US targeted a population upon which to experiment. Who is next?

If you are so afraid, let me ask, after you go out in public and return home, do you immediately strip naked, throw your clothes in the washing machine to sterilize them and take a shower? The virus could be all over your clothes and skin and hair.

There is so much fear. We all need to think. We cannot realistically eliminate exposure. The virus will come back. It is in the environment. It is inevitable. Sweden realized this and is letting it burn through the population like any other virus. Their rates of infection and death are no worse and at points better than other more restrictive nations.

The worst part about this virus is the lack of knowledge about it and the lack of previous exposure. It feels like facing a tsunami rather than the evening tide. That is why the numbers appear so bad, even if the percentage is not.

No one who is sane wants to die. No one who is sane wants others to die. But how far are we willing to go to avoid something that is inevitable? Perhaps it is time to realize we are finite and to explore the possibility that there is an offer for life after death.
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Then for the sake of everyone else, stay home until the vaccine is perfected - we don't want you endangering other people's lives.

I am more than happy to stay home. Would you mind paying my bills?

 

[CarlJ]

The idea that one has to rely on the actions of others to stay safe goes so against the grain of supporters of individualism.

This.

• There is a loud crowd on here who takes the attitude of "this doesn't appear personally useful to me, therefore screw it." It's not about you, it's about statistics.
• Lots of people saying, "but it won't be perfect, so I won't participate". It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to prevent enough transmissions to get the R0 value down below 1.0. Then the virus will die off - from the population as a whole - on its own.
• People saying "but, but, Big Brother!" Yeah, this doesn't give the government or tech companies any useful data to track you - it's been quite purposefully designed that way, to the extent that some countries that want big centralized databases are unhappy with this Apple/Google approach.
• Then they say, "but it's a slippery slope to $BAD_THING!" Why draw that line here? Your smartphone is a much bigger jump on that slope - if you don't immediately discard your smartphone, you're just a paranoid hypocrite, railing against a small thing that's incredibly useful to society (like helping to keep it alive) and ignoring something much bigger (all the privacy problems with that smartphone in your hand) because it's useful and convenient to you personally.

If you don't want to participate, fine. Go home, and stay there (not just at night, not just when you're not at work - 24/7) until a vaccine has been perfected and released, and you've been vaccinated. We need you to not pose a risk to the rest of society. If that's inconvenient to you, too bad. Your principles are worth dealing with a bit of inconvenience, aren't they? Or are they just selectively-applied things to get outraged about?
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I am more than happy to stay home. Would you mind paying my bills?

You're creating the problem, you deal with it. Personal responsibility.

 

[Websnapx2]

Seriously — half this thread has their head in the sand either purposefully or naively. The info is right there.

• It's opt-in
• You need to download another app for it to work fully work
• It's centralized away from government
• if you have no app, the info never leaves your phone
• All beacons are randomized and flashed every 14 minutes
• the beacons are basically doing what your phone does with cell towers anyway, but without the info leaving your phone
• If you have tested positive, you aren't forced to add that data to any system, app or database
• You can opt-out

These are the things you should be taking away from this if you are not willing to read the entire article (and it is very easy to see who isn't by asking questions that are very much answered). Now, I can appreciate that ideals cloud aspects of this, such as whether you trust certain companies, is you feel your rights are being considered, or just general concern for privacy as a whole. I can really understand that, and I think I can say that it seems the majority agree, even if it's a sliding scale of how vigilant we need to be. But here is the thing, A) we can't make a decision for everyone (either for or against) so it is opt-in (if you don't trust that, nothing will sway you) and B) Short of that, don't update. If you still don't trust not installing an app, not updating your OS, or that your information is anonymous then why do you own a smartphone? What it's doing could always have been done, as the hardware capability has always been there. If Apple and Google wanted this they have had plenty of opportunities to bake it into their respective systems. There is no data being used that anyone without access to your phone can use (your contact stays on your phone).

If you are unwilling to accept or understand any of these concepts then you need to ask yourself why are you using a mobile communication device?

 

[Mitochris]

Thanks, but no thanks. I dont want to be a part of this fascicist surveillance program. I want my ******* rights back.

What rights would that be? Your right to infect others?
what about the right by others not to be exposed to infectious diseases?

 

[CarlJ]

Surprised Facebook doesn’t want in on this action - we all know how innocent they are, and just want to help

They might want in, they have nothing useful to contribute. "Invasive creepiness" is pretty much the opposite of what the designers were after.

 

[Websnapx2]

No one knows all of the vectors for this virus.

The irony here is rediculous — so here is a system being put in place to further understand more info about the virus and how it moves around, and doubting it after lengthy detail on how it works is the proper response?

What I wrote (and what you replied to with the above) was that you need to be exposed to be infected — that is a fact and a solid vector we do know or else shelter in place, and quarantines would not be effective.

This is simple stuff.

 

[Mitochris]

Don’t update your os. Once you do you’ll be sending out beacons and can’t opt out.

On come on. Read the dam post.
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The right that’s being surrendered (or implied it should be surrendered): the ability to live independently of others.

you live in a society. with that comes responsibility and the requirement that you also obey to its rules. Your actions will impact others, just as their actions impact you. Claiming that you are living indepe from others is just BS. Your responsibility in this case is that you ensure that you do not endanger the health of others. You can do that in multiple ways. Here is a convenient way of doing it. The danger that this type of technology will be exploited in the long run, in my opinion is minor. Governments would not go via Apple or google to get to your data, but the providers. Much less heat on them.

 

[bearda]

Good implementation of the underlying APIs, but I feel like where this is going to fall down are the individual apps. If individual health organizations are supposed to be responsible for that bit I feel like this will be a nonstarter in the US.

 

[Websnapx2]

Good implementation of the underlying APIs, but I feel like where this is going to fall down are the individual apps. If individual health organizations are supposed to be responsible for that bit I feel like this will be a nonstarter in the US.

That's totally fair in general. We can't be saying this will be a solid system if the apps connecting to it function poorly. It does seem like the majority of the heavy lifting is in the API though so unless they implement it poorly, or have a poor UI it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

 

[code-m]

This needs to be on by default and opt-out after a laborious effort. I fear I live in a country where a large community of dumb people will render this ineffective.

I already stayed at home for 2 months, thanks Italy. Don't need any more nanny state or liberal companies trashing my privacy and rights.

Yes I read the specs. Yes I read the full article. No, no way I will willingly give up God given rights.

This is incredibly well done. I just hope people that test positive for the virus will remember to return to the app and enter the results.

Give me liberty AND give me death.

Once again, it’s not a data/privacy issue, it’s an ideological/societal one.

I will not have my phone pinging me just because someone else has gotten sick. If I get sick, I’ll take appropriate measures. But I’m not walking around waiting to get pinged. In high density areas like a city, you’ll be at risk for getting more pings about COVID than texts from friends and colleagues.

To me, this is simply obnoxious; but imagine the people who already can’t handle anxiety or mainstream fear paranoia, how will they do with being pinged about their potential acute death sentence multiple times a day?

Furthermore, unless I end up in hospital from symptoms, I won’t be pursuing a COVID test because of how haphazardly it’s assumed I should suddenly be tracked. That’s a big NO. I was not opposed to getting tested until seeing how a positive test suddenly comes with all of these assumptions and implied actions to take next.

All of this is a red flag setting precedent for worse things. In the other thread I used the example of HIV/AIDS. That’s something that “should” have contact tracing, yet it does not. So far we can statistically say that people recover from COVID. Not so with HIV, which is a death sentence* on maintenance. So I find this COVID tracking supremely suspicious.

If you’ve got no problem with this, then get ahead of the curve you’re flattening and imagine a future where you’re pinged for passing a stranger with COVID … then passing one with HIV … then passing one with Herpes … etc. It’s all inappropriate.

The violation of privacy is not with the data (which I applaud Apple for handling well), but with the idea of allowing our health to be broadcast and allowing our personal devices invaded with pings from those who willy-nilly broadcast their health out of some noble sense of saving the world.

It would honestly make more sense to have no privacy and share everyone’s contact info. That way if you, Person Who Supports Tracking, pass me and get me sick, then I can sue your insurance to cover my healthcare to get sick. How does that sound? Just like with a car accident.

After all, contacting COVID and ending up in hospital in the US is more likely a financial death sentence than an actual death sentence. Statistically speaking, anyway.

EDIT: Corrected typo of not including the word “sentence.”

Life's a bitch. Lives saved vs your nebulous and mostly imaginary fears of... of what exactly. WTF dreadful consequences do you foresee for this data getting breached? And if your answer is anything along the lines of "well I would have wanted my positive COVID status not to have been known", screw you. And if you have genuine concerns, feel free to balance that against the good of this kind of tracking.

They had far more aggressive tracking in S. Korea. And yeah the people there were tools and tried very hard to de-anonymize the data to publicly shame some of the infected, by S. Korea is doing pretty damned good right now infection wise. Sometimes the needs of compulsive zealotry must bend to the needs of people in the real world who simply want. Not. To. Die.

Great, then this won't affect you. For all intents and purposes, you don't carry a phone around.
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Head in the sand. Got it.

And btw, it is telling you exposure time and proximity. But if you're the type where the less you know the better, then sure, this functionality is not meant for you.

It’s encouraging to see many of the comments here are sceptical of this service. History shows that governments all all too happy to infringe on personal rights and liberties under the guise of ‘safety;’ the modern spin in our corporatocracy is that it is private companies who are offering these slick, well-marketed Orwellian surveillance systems. But make no mistake, it’s the same old fascism.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I dont want to be a part of this fascicist surveillance program. I want my ******* rights back."

Good lord, the DRAMA.

UK NHSX app here... oh, we're using something else, so this story is already entirely irrelevant to us here.
Oh well, never mind, hey!

(a) Are you afraid somebody you love might get COVID19?
(b) Are you afraid the shutdowns, that will be more prolonged and severe if contact tracing is less extensive, will affect you or somebody you love negatively?

You should probably look up the definitions of both “fascist” and “surveillance” because neither of them remotely applies in this situation.

One of the most effective ways to stop the virus spreading, is to trace people who have recently come into contact with a person that has tested positive for the virus.

This is a labour intensive process, and doesn't scale too well. An app would make it possible for this whole process to be automated. Doing it manually involves contacting family, friends, colleagues, people you sat next to on the train etc.

The procedure for anyone who has come into contact with someone that has tested positive will vary by region, but in most cases, it will involve self-isolating at home for the recommended period of time.

Having effective contact tracing methods in place is one of the best ways to ease "lockdown" rules.

Two reasons at the top of my head:

1. You need a gatekeeper to prevent people from falsely claiming they’ve tested positive. This gatekeeper is the verified health authority, the app is the vehicle for them to communicate with the API.
2. As the situation develops and we learn more about the virus, the thresholds to trigger an exposure notification will need to be tweaked. Again this is done via the app whose precise workings the verified health authorities control. For example, when testing capacities in one country improve, they might want to lower this threshold.

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So you willingly gave up your God given right of moving around but this anonymous exposure tracking is worse so you rather stay home for longer?

Accorsing to the article, the health app will be able to tell how long you were in contact with the person that tested positive, and how far away from them you were.

This can be used to work out how much of a risk you were exposed to, so the app can give you better advice.

Here’s a thought: exposure is NOT the same thing as infection.

So you approve of having unsuspecting people infect each other? I'm amazed at how many people are on Team COVID.

If you compare the unemployment rate in the U.S. and South Korea, are you sure you prefer the land of the free’s approach?
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What about you pay a tax to finance the unemployment benefits of those laid off due to the crisis as an alternative to allowing this contact tracing and wearing a mask? Tell me which option you prefer.

Tell the various US governors that. Many of them are acting like exposure to COVID-19 will definitely kill you and that the only solution is for everyone to stay at home until the economy is utterly destroyed.

If this happened 10-15 years ago people would be freaking out even more then they are now about the privacy implications... but 10-15 years of bamboozling us into steadily giving our data away willingly via social engineering has softened the effect.

The younger generation is especially apathetic because they were born into this mentality. It's been normalized for them by their parents and the social landscape they helped build through their utter disinterest in whether the "progress" they were witnessing was actually progress at all (thank you to the Jersey Shore/Myspace generation).

They know not what they are giving up... but hey look at these cool Animoji's, isn't Apple awesome!

And privacy is not an ideological/societal issue?

So you do get tested daily to ensure that you can take appropriate measures (of self-isolation) as soon as you get infected? Essentially having the same attitude as Pence in regard to mask wearing?
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So why are you using a cellphone let alone a smartphone in the first place? Since you know everything the phone knows will eventually be breached.
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And yet you are using a smartphone...

To all those people (and more) on this thread that are on both sides maybe you should review this about the virus.

Yes, folks I don't know countries and governments around the world (except Sweden and some States) shutdown an entire economy for a virus. Look at the numbers, stop catering to the fear, get informed, ask questions, think critically and think objectively.

Apple now focus on getting Xcode (full) for iOS/iPadOS.

 

[daniesy]

So there’s no way to turn off the tracking, just the notifications. Great! We’re supposed to believe the info that’s put out by companies who slow down our phones, sell our data, promote censorship on their platforms, believe there are more than 2 genders and enforce this on their users. Right. Apple has our best interest at heart. You have to be mentally challenged to believe that.

The only way to not be a part of this is to not upgrade your os. My 11 pro max will die with 13.4 installed.

 

[V_Man]

It should be like the WiFi toggle and reenable itself frequently to make it harder for people to be selfish.

No. Absolutely not.

 

[sakagura]

Oh good, a fake opt out button that is just a placebo not connected to the OS, except maybe to report you to the authorities for trying to protect your privacy. How quickly the Totalitarian yoke has been put around our necks.

Just stop watching Will Smith action movies from early 2000s bruh. It's not healthy to watch Alex Jones either. These people are actors. Time to deal with real life. If you're not living in China these evil plots against your freedom don't exist.

 

[ikir]

No way will I trust Apple with this! Next thing you know, they'll want your face and fingerprints!

…wait

You know these are stored in Secure Enclave only inside your smartphone
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I’m on 12.4 and have no plans to update. I might consider this if it is an app but a system update is a non starter.

Like bug fixes, framework, this is part of the OS. Update for this reason and other 1000.

 

[Mitochris]

To all those people (and more) on this thread that are on both sides maybe you should review this about the virus.

Yes, folks I don't know countries and governments around the world (except Sweden and some States) shutdown an entire economy for a virus. Look at the numbers, stop catering to the fear, get informed, ask questions, think critically and think objectively.

Apple now focus on getting Xcode (full) for iOS/iPadOS.

You are joking, no? Please tell me you link was meant as a joke. How can you ask people to get informed and then post that?

 

[V_Man]

Oh if only Apple showed a message "disconnecting from WiFi until tomorrow morning" when you tap those buttons.....oh wait, Apple does show that exact message.

We've been through this before. This isn't a "turn off" toggle, it's a temporary disconnect toggle. This makes sense to 99% of users.

It’s still a stupid feature. I can remember to turn my WiFi on or off.

 

[CarlJ]

The right that’s being surrendered (or implied it should be surrendered): the ability to live independently of others, and at least to not have my phone ping others of my life nor broadcast an aspect of my life to others’ phones.

You do not live independently of others, and you haven't since you were born. You depend on police and fire departments to keep you safe, you probably don't personally grow every bit of food you eat, you likely didn't sew those clothes you're wearing out of cloth you wove out of yarn you got from your sheep that you sheared, after raising them since they were born. You're typing (or tapping) on a device you didn't make - that you couldn't even begin to make yourself - using electricity you didn't generate, sending signals over network infrastructure you didn't create, for the express purpose of communicating your opinions to other people.

You don't live independently. And you haven't at any point in your life. Get over that foolish notion right now. You're a part of society. That society has a bunch of rules it requires you to follow. In return, you get access to all that that society has to offer - like clothing and buildings and roads and computers and electricity and networks. And you couldn't survive without all that stuff society makes available.

Now society needs something from you. It needs you to help keep more people from getting infected with this damned virus. Because many of the people who get infected get very sick, and some of them die. Yes, the flu kills a lot of people every year. This virus has killed 60 thousand people in the US in the past couple months. That's more Americans than died during the entire war in Vietnam. I seem to recall people being fairly upset over that impact at the time. And it's not instead of the flu, it's in addition to the flu - all of the last few sentences to say: this really is a big, important thing that we need to work together to defeat. It's not something to downplay or shrug off. And society at large needs everyone's help in preventing the spread of this thing. Contact tracing is the method that has proven most effective - ask the experts. Widespread fast contact tracing, to get ahead of the spread. Doing with manually doesn't scale. So, we need to automate it. Apple and Google have developed a system that doesn't store any personally identifiable information (so there's nothing for governments to misuse). There's a huge upside to using this, and basically no downside, other than it makes a small bunch of people irrationally afraid.

 

[QCassidy352]

You know these are stored in Secure Enclave only inside your smartphone
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And you know that the data collected through this API is also only stored on the device, right?

 

[V_Man]

You do not live independently of others, and you haven't since you were born. You depend on police and fire departments to keep you safe, you probably don't personally grow every bit of food you eat, you likely didn't sew those clothes you're wearing out of cloth you wove out of yarn you got from your sheep that you sheared, after raising them since they were born. You're typing (or tapping) on a device you didn't make - that you couldn't even begin to make yourself - using electricity you didn't generate, sending signals over network infrastructure you didn't create, for the express purpose of communicating your opinions to other people.

You don't live independently. And you haven't at any point in your life. Get over that foolish notion right now. You're a part of society. That society has a bunch of rules it requires you to follow. In return, you get access to all that that society has to offer - like clothing and buildings and roads and computers and electricity and networks. And you couldn't survive without all that stuff society makes available.

Now society needs something from you. It needs you to help keep more people from getting infected with this damned virus. Because many of the people who get infected get very sick, and some of them die. Yes, the flu kills a lot of people every year. This virus has killed 60 thousand people in the US in the past couple months. That's more Americans than died during the entire war in Vietnam. I seem to recall people being fairly upset over that impact at the time. And it's not instead of the flu, it's in addition to the flu - all of the last few sentences to say: this really is a big, important thing that we need to work together to defeat. It's not something to downplay or shrug off. And society at large needs everyone's help in preventing the spread of this thing. Contact tracing is the method that has proven most effective - ask the experts. Widespread fast contact tracing, to get ahead of the spread. Doing with manually doesn't scale. So, we need to automate it. Apple and Google have developed a system that doesn't store any personally identifiable information (so there's nothing for governments to misuse). There's a huge upside to using this, and basically no downside, other than it makes a small bunch of people irrationally afraid.

Thanks you for your opinion. I won’t be using this feature.

I work with in healthcare. I work with Covid patients everyday at work. i still won’t be using this tracking

 

[QCassidy352]

I won’t be using this feature.

Why? Using it could help save lives (and on a broader societal scale WILL save lives, AND therefore help the economic recovery), and it costs you... what, exactly?

 

[code-m]

You are joking, no? Please tell me you link was meant as a joke. How can you ask people to get informed and then post that?

You are right, please keep the economy close till hopefully one day we get this saviour vaccine that may or mayn't be effective for everyone.

Be afraid, very afraid of the invisible enemy, and while you are at it trust the powers that be to look out for your safety. I guess you need to review your studies in microbiology 101.

Great plan, good luck with that

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thanks, but no thanks. I dont want to be a part of this fascicist surveillance program. I want my ******* rights back.

You aren’t forced to be a part of this program. I don’t like it either but, calling this Fascist when it is voluntary shows the reader A) you don’t know what Fascism is, or B) you are using the term Fascist for hyperbolic effect.