You post to a public forum where you can be monitored anonymously by anyone anywhere in the world, and you're worried about a program to notify you if you might have been exposed to a deadly pathogen? I don't have the mental agility to perform the gymnastics needed to comprehend this statement.
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Apple's Exposure Notification System Guide
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You post to a public forum where you can be monitored anonymously by anyone anywhere in the world, and you're worried about a program to notify you if you might have been exposed to a deadly pathogen? I don't have the mental agility to perform the gymnastics needed to comprehend this statement.
Don't worry. The # of steps required will ensure it's beyond your intellectual capabilities. You failed on the first step: reading the article.
You do realize that even the craziest persons in the world think they are connecting the dots?
Well, I do outsource the thinking behind the weather forecast to others.
You realize even some of the sanest think they’re connecting the dots, only to miss whole swaths of truth and reality, rendering them insane without knowing it? Do you also realize I care more about opposing this surveillance ideology than your personal judgment of craziness/insanity?
Likewise, I consult others for what they’ve studied and know well. But I don’t surrender to them nor how their data affects my life. Many forecasters link rain with gloom. I rather enjoy rainy days. Thank goodness I didn’t outsource the quality of my life to them!
Thankfully I won’t be outsourcing the welfare of my body to Bill Gates either.
Because the essence of his message was talking to me / people who oppose this surveillance project. Did you not connect that?
The name thing was the most tongue in cheek part of my whole message. It doesn’t matter. I forgot about the Ryan and Eric analogy, but it still doesn’t matter. The Ryans who will not partake in this are people like me, not the false characterization, useless ad-hominem of that person’s post.
It’s almost as if all you did was read the pointless/joke name component and jump at it, as if the most insignificant component somehow discredits the actual message/assertion. The name doesn’t matter, but the mischaracterization does, and so does this precedent of this surveillance project.
Like I opened with: sane people think they’ve got the dots connected while missing whole points and realities. Blows my mind.
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It would be small minded to think that this system couldn't be used for other purposes in the future, perhaps when other infectious agents or currently unknown situations occur. Don't assume because I made a comment on this macrumors forum that I am catering to fear, that I am not informed, that I haven't asked questions, or that I am not thinking critically or objectively. In fact, my comment was, in part, critical thinking. If a user does not go back to the app to notify others that he or she has tested positive (for whatever infectious agent or other future reason to use this system) then the card house partially falls down.
We are very lucky to almost not be affected by the pandemic at all. No loved ones have died, my job has not been affected, only my retirement accounts which have partially bounced back but will take a few years to fully recover. That said, I do have family, friends and family of co-workers that are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed. My mother-in-law works in a children's cancer hospital. We are taking the proper precautions to limit our exposure and not become a carrier, surprisingly doing this has not negatively impacted our lives. We are getting a lot of work done to the house that would have been dragged out over the course of the entire summer, possibly longer.
Purposely off topic... but I appreciate reading things like this. I've taken the opposite approach, myself. This has really given me the opportunity to slow down. Not losing 2 hours a day in commuting has allowed me to spend an hour here or there doing those things, at a nice pace... rather than rushing through them and losing an entire Saturday or Sunday to them, trying to get as much done as quickly as possible on those weekends to minimize the loss of my free time.
We're still working, fortunately, but our weekends have been ours to spend at home as opposed to being at one in-laws or the others or with other friends and family.
It is the truth and reality that this exposure notification system offers close to zero surveillance capabilities to anyone while using any computer connected to internet, smartphones in particular leaks massively more data to various parties. You hear the word 'tracking' and the rest of the explanation seems not to register with you at all. I don't see any connecting of dots with you, unless you count imaginary things.
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And it wouldn't be small-minded to think similar tracking couldn't be already employed by various parties? Google and Apple have full control over this system. They can switch it off with a simple software update.
Might they be pressured to do otherwise? Sure, the same way they have been pressured over the last decade by governments to give all kinds of access to smartphones. What makes you think they they haven't caved in the past but would now going forward? And if they can be pressured to use this system for other purposes, wouldn't they have been pressured in the past similarly to give access to encrypted communication, or even to give life GPS access?
And that is before looking at the cellphone carriers that know with a certain precision where every cellphone is. Then there are all the first and third-party services running on smartphones that have access to location data, from mapping, weather to fitness applications.
And to see how well Apple and Google can stand up to pressure look at all the countries that wanted a centralised system (and started developing apps for it) and over the last week or so have most of them caved in when Apple and Google said no to giving their apps more access.
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I think what they're missing is how it works. It's an API. All they need to do is revoke the API, no software updates needed.
The classic API example I see tossed around is the Uber + Google Maps example. Uber runs it's own app, it uses Google's Maps API to overlay (underlay?) it's UI to show where cars are in proximity to you, with the GPS data the drivers app feeds into Uber. If google revokes their Maps API, you're looking at a gray screen with some cars scattered around without any context.
So long as they're using the API, and not their own developed systems, they have a HUGE reason to do what they say they will and pull the API after this has run its usefulness... billions, perhaps even trillions, or reasons why...
There are multiple ways they can revoke it. The Google Maps API is a serverside API which can be revoked by Google at any moment because they are Google's servers. So far I don't know who is running the server where people with a positive test result would upload their anonymous identifiers to. Either Google or Apple might run this server since it is their APIs that download these identifiers to the phones. In that case, Apple & Google can simply shutdown that server, and no matching can happen anymore.
At that point, the phones would still exchange the anonymous identifiers but at least on Macs Apple can push small security software updates to the computer without user intervention. The APIs could also be designed to check back with Apple or Google every day and would stop working without an OK back. Apple could even revoke the developer certificates used to create the individual apps. And last but not least, the APIs could simply be removed with the next software update, those come anyway every month or two.
Apple/Google don't get any identifiers. Each app will upload to its own server.
The most likely way it works is a kill-switch on Apple servers. They can have iOS periodically request a config file from their servers which has some kind of "enable exposure notification = yes". One day they switch it to "no" and apps become unable to use the API.
There's already several such config files that let Apple enable/disable features, change what servers/URLs the device uses for other features, or change some parameters. For example iOS doesn't have any hardcoded server name to do Apple ID login. The only hardcoded URL is http://init.ess.apple.com/WebObjects/VCInit.woa/wa/getBag?ix=4 and it gets everything else from there. Or this one for iTunes (mostly URLs, but also "frequency of appstore update checks in the background" etc).
The app vendor runs the server (which, really, is just a blob store — one user uploads their ID; all users regularly download all IDs).
No need, really. They just disable the API in the OS.
Exactly.
Good to know. As they’ve also previously stated that the matching will be based on region, ie, the phone will only download the identifiers of people tested positive in your region it makes sense to have the server also to be region-specific. And since ‘region’ now mostly means country and there will only be one app per country, attaching that server to that app or app maker is only logical.
There are still going to be some additional things that need figuring out for parts of the world where there is a lot of cross border traffic. Right now a lot of borders are closed so it is more important to get this solution out of the door quickly and worry about perfecting it later
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More potential for abuse than when people started carrying around with them internet-connected GPS-enabled devices?
It's absolutely pointless. Unless every person on Earth has a smart phone and enables this, it won't do anything.
Why does everyone have to have a smartphone with it enabled to work? Seems it'll do a halfway decent job of telling me when I've been near someone with the disease. The thing is, if it tells me, there's nothing I can do about it but hope I didn't get it, so whatever.
Um... because without a smart phone to track it, you can't report or be reported to.
If you have an updated smartphone, you'll get reports from other people who have updated smartphones, which is probably most people if you live in the US.
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I'm not using it. It seems pointless because I can't act on it. Don't think my phone can even run it, and that's only because I hold out so hard for the headphone jack.
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There are a ton of people, especially the older ones (you know, the ones dying), that don't have smartphones. Like I said, this whole thing is totally pointless.
Dude, it’s not 2003. 46% of people 64 and above have a smartphone. And growing rapidly.
Also, 23% of deaths are of people 45-64. Not that old.