States are rushing to hire people to become contact tracers, medical professionals that can assist individuals that test positive to identify all of the people they have been in contact with over the past 14 days. This is considered critical as states let shelter in place orders expire. This way, people that have been in contact with that positive individual can quarantine themselves for 14 days, to reduce the spread of the virus.
Apple and Google are working on changes to the operating systems so that apps can be downloaded that will use bluetooth technology to keep track of everyone else with that app on their phone they have been in close contact with. So that anyone that you have been in contact with that tests positive, you can automatically be notified.
China, Taiwan, Singapore, et al have forced through their cellular networks a type of app to their consumer smart phones. You have it on your phone whether you want it or not.
I don’t see that this type of forced technology will fly in most of the Western world, due freedoms, rights, etc. Recent polls show that half of smart phone users in the US, would not download or use such an app, for fear of government tracking. Thus significantly reducing the effectiveness of contact tracing.
Here in Australia we have such an app. It is apparently based on the app developed in Singapore.
The app is not “forced through the cellular network.” That basically isn’t technically possible.
Download and installation is currently voluntary. To be effective in aiding efforts against the epidemic we are told a minimum of 40% use is needed. The app was released on Sunday and had 2 million downloads in the next two days. I haven’t seen figures since then.
The app does not report where you have been and who you have met with. I actually doesn’t even know who you are. You provide it with any name and a phone number to send you messages on. All it knows are bluetooth idents. It watches for bluetooth devices nearby and if it finds one running the app they both recored one another’s bluetooth ident if you spend more than 15 minutes together. If in the future one of the people using the app tests positive for Corvid-19, the system can find the bluetooth addresses of everyone that was near, and then sends a message to the phone number recorded for it. That’s it.
The source code is going to be released.
On the scale of current massive privacy issues we have with technology, especially as seen with the likes of Google, Facebook, etc, this is extraordinarily minor. I really don’t think people understand just how intrusive private enterprise is already. If you visit any large shopping mall your location is tracked the entire visit. How long you linger in front of a store, what stores you visit. If you use the available WiFi networks your traffic is logged and analysed. Nobody complains about the implicit freedoms and rights here. Some governments I would not trust. But if you don’t trust yours, you are already screwed.
I’m in Australia and I downloaded the app and I’ve used it twice so far, both when I was out in public for longer than a few minutes. You don’t have to keep it running all the time and it simply tracks bluetooth beacon pings, and doesn’t record your name, location or other details - which is less than I know Apple collects already since y my phone can tell me where I parked my car etc. As Francis Vaughan says, I think this is a very minor privacy issue to accept when it will help control the virus and allow us more freedom.
If it were necessary (and made it possible) to travel, visit restaurants, go to theaters, etc.? Hell yeah. I don’t particularly trust our current government, but I would much much rather have some semblance of normality than privacy at this point.
Pakistani here and we have had the app since mid March. I have it and it keeps telling you if you are in a safe zone. We also independently get alerts on the mobile phone text if the central system (which isn’t linked to the App) detects you have been in contact with a suspected or a confirmed case.. In addition the Government has been using a tracking system, designed by the intelligence services to catch terrorist, to track and trace COVID-19 cases
Yeah, the privacy concerns ring hollow. Since that particular horse has bolted, grazed in the fields, shat on the roads and had it’s ways with the fillies. To echo Francis Vaughan, private enterprise already has reams of data. And they can tailor it so they can sell to you.
As an illustration, there is a coffee shop across I frequent across the street from a large shop selling women’s clothes (remember shops?). I have never been in the later shop, but they send me text messages near my mother and sisters birthday, asking me by name to buy birthday presents for them, again by name.:eek:
Even smaller enterprises can get in on the act, the top message in my texts is from a insulation selling business near my parents shop, which i) I have also never been to, ii) refers to me by name :smack:
Another user of the Australian app. I endorse both** Francis Vaughan** and **Girl from Mars’**s comments. I think the fear of a privacy backlash was very high in government minds because they were responding to them thoroughly in not only the design but also the pre-release publicity. They have produced something I have no particular issues with, as they’ve said, and modest in comparison to the data I freely release to total strangers every day.
Still, it was not enough and there are many talk-back callers who are not going to download it.
Probably the big concern is that its a private refusal and a way of sticking it to The Man. Australians have been very compliant on the whole with the strictures of lock-down, even when they rankle. I doubt you’d ever see a Michigan State House type stand-off here. Not downloading the app becomes a passive, hard to detect act of defiance if you’ve suffered through the hardships of standing a bit further away from other people and forced to stay home and watch Netflix.
Not sure of the talkback demographic but it’s unlikely to match the infection/risk demographic.
Sydney COVID-19 heat map
Interestingly that the hot spot is centred on Bondi, reputedly home to the Kiwi expat community and also the medium density student accomodation for UNSW which has a high Asian/Chinese enrolment.
Mind you with just of 3,000 cases in the state, (112 in Bondi) what shows as high is not a patch on cases, much less mortality in Italy, Spain, UK or New York.
Also that the Kings Cross precinct shows as medium, which might indicate a further bit of fortune with the lock-out laws having a positive impact regarding social distancing.
Interesting article in NY Times re. contact tracing:
Lockdown Is a Blunt Tool. We Have a Sharper One.
Contact tracing helps people to protect themselves and their families.
By Tom Frieden and Kelly Henning
Dr. Frieden is a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Henning is director of public health at Bloomberg Philanthropies.