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The big push now is for people to install an app on their phones to track themselves so the government can keep track of where the flu virus is going. (I’m not even going to continue pointing out that this has nothing at all to do with the flu, and at this point we’re already 2/3rds of the way to herd immunity anyway.) This will eventually get morphed into an implantable computer chip option, as is being discussed in Israel. But they understand psychology, and understand you have to slowly get people to consent to various levels of abuse, the first one being openly monitored by the government in everything they do.
Agreeing to install this app will give you certain travel privileges, including the privilege to go outside and go to certain stores that are not Walmart. Most or all workplaces will require that you have the app.
Google already has everyone’s location data from their Android default settings. They just want to make people get an app so that they feel like they have consented to the tracking. Further, Google and Apple don’t want to take the blame for sharing the data.
Once everyone gets this app, the flu police can just tell people that they have to press ‘Share My Data’ if they want to walk on the street, and they will have fully committed to having their every move traced and permanently cataloged in a government database – something that never happened with the NSA spying program. Consent is key for the steps that are to come, and this app, connected to permission to go outside, will accomplish the establishing of consent. I would imagine that at least 95% of the population will go along with this. Even the right-wingers who are out protesting will begrudgingly do it.
This is, of course, not enough for WaPo, which demands that we immediately stop even trying to believe that we will have any privacy for even a few more weeks.
Apple and Google’s announcement last month of a joint effort to track the coronavirus by smartphone sparked a wave of excitement among public health officials hoping the technology would help alert them to potential new infections and map the pandemic’s spread.
But as the tech giants have revealed more details, officials now say the software will be of little use. Due to strict rules imposed by the companies, the system will notify smartphone users if they’ve potentially come into contact with an infected person, but it won’t share any data with health officials or reveal where those meetings took place.
Local health authorities in states like North Dakota, as well as in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, say they’ve pleaded with the companies to give them more control over the kinds of information their apps can collect. Without the companies’ help, some worry their contact tracing systems will remain dangerously strained.
But Apple and Google have refused, arguing that letting the apps collect location data or loosening other smartphone rules would undermine people’s privacy. The companies are also concerned that easing the restrictions around apps’ Bluetooth use would drain phone battery life, which could irritate customers. That unbending stance has led some health authorities to abandon hopes of building a fully functioning contact-tracing app.
The struggle for effective digital contact tracing is reshaping the debate over the trade-offs between privacy and public health when lives are immediately at stake. Public officials say the need to understand how the virus is spreading is urgent, informing decisions about whether communities can reopen and detecting future outbreaks.
But the tech giants’ resistance to letting public health officials access people’s data has a long precedent of keeping personal information out of the hands of governments. Apple and Google said they reached out to hundreds of public health officials for input on the software before it was announced.
Though the companies first debuted the effort by calling it a “contact tracing” system, company executives now say it is designed to do no such thing.They said they intend to fully release the system in the middle of this month.
Company officials said public health authorities had asked for assistance because contact tracing apps that relied on Bluetooth would run into technical challenges without their help. They said their effort was not built to digitize contact tracing or to replace the human element of public health.
But Helen Nissenbaum, a professor of information science and director of the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell University, called Apple and Google’s use of privacy to defend their refusal to allow public health officials access to smartphone technology a “flamboyant smokescreen.” She said it was ironic that the two companies had for years tolerated the mass collection of people’s data but were now preventing its use for a purpose that is “critical to public health.”
“If it’s between Google and Apple having the data, I would far prefer my physician and the public health authorities to have the data about my health status,” she said. “At least they’re constrained by laws.”
The Apple-Google system uses the short-range Bluetooth antennas in smartphones to log when two people come into contact for a short period of time, but not where that contact took place. An alert is sent if one of the people tests positive for a coronavirus infection, but that information is not shared with public health officials or contact-tracing teams.
That limitation has led some health authorities to attempt to build their own apps outside of the Apple-Google design. But developers around the world who have tried to build their own systems have run into functionality issues. For example, Apple restricts all apps not made by Apple from tracking Bluetooth in the “background” to avoid battery drain and privacy issues.
That means that a user must keep one of the apps built by health departments open for it to work — something most users would find incredibly inconvenient. Any time, for example, a user took a phone call, read an email or put their phone in their pocket, the app would not be running.
The tension over virus-tracking apps reflects a major power imbalance between the tech giants and state and local health officials, who argue that Apple and Google’s technical decisions have undermined their response to a global health emergency. It also highlights the tech giants’ ability to exert unfettered control over how billions of smartphones work.
“They are exercising sovereign power. It’s just crazy,” said Matt Stoller, the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, a Washington think tank devoted to reducing the power of monopolies. Apple and Google have “decided for the whole world,” he added, “that it’s not a decision for the public to make. … You have a private government that is making choices over your society instead of democratic governments being able to make those choices.”
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The companies have argued that limiting the data the apps use could bolster their adoption rate, because people may not trust or use an app that logs their location for later use by public health authorities. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found last month that a larger group of Americans said they trusted public health agencies more than Apple and Google to keep their information secure.
Some privacy advocates have applauded the companies’ stance around anonymity and security concerns. Amos Toh, an artificial intelligence and technology researcher at Human Rights Watch, said he worries that authoritarian governments might compel the companies to change the terms so that data can be scooped up and used to suppress human rights.
“It opens up a dangerous new front,” Toh said. “These technologies are unproven and we have questions about their accuracy and repercussions for the most vulnerable groups.”
But some parts of the U.S., including Apple and Google’s home state, say the restrictions have rendered the apps effectively useless. In California, epidemiologists in charge of contact tracing are ignoring the Apple-Google approach and have decided the best course for contact tracing is to train thousands of people to do the work.
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Countries such as Germany, Italy and the Netherlands have said they will use the Apple-Google system, though other nations, including Norway and the U.K., are building and testing more centralized apps they hope will work around the companies’ restrictions. France’s digital minister, Cédric O, said in a TV interview last week that it was deeply regrettable how Apple had failed to help the country’s efforts during the crisis, and that officials would remember the slight.
But some public health experts believe the push toward unproven virus-tracing apps has wasted time and missed the point. Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now working with the health organization Vital Strategies, said the proximity-tracing system as proposed by Apple and Google has “been largely a distraction.”
“There are very serious questions about its feasibility and its ability to be done with adequate respect for privacy, and it has muddied the water for what actually needs to happen,” Frieden said in an interview Wednesday. “This was an approach that was done with not much understanding and a lot of overpromising.”
His group is now working with New York state officials to build three smartphone apps tackling more basic problems: assisting quarantined people with remote health-care visits and food deliveries, and helping contact tracers do their jobs. He said developers grappling with the Apple-Google system would have a greater impact focusing on simpler struggles for local health departments as opposed to pursuing “magical thinking.”
The proximity-tracing systems are “a bright shiny object,” he said, “but right now they’re doing nothing to stop the pandemic.”
Yeah, okay guy.
It’s almost June and they’re still telling us we’re in a pandemic.
They’re going to let up in July and August, then they’re going to really start enforcing the next stage of this operation when the fall comes and they claim the virus is back in force.
That’s when you’re really going to start getting a clear view of the society they are creating for you to be locked in.
It is all a planned operation, which we now have a pretty good picture of, so it’s not at all hard to predict.
