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Suggest HN: Google, Apple and FB work together to help stop coronavirus

1 points by FailMore 7y ago

To limit the spread of coronavirus, in China they have been using widespread facial recognition technology to track who has been near who. From this you can download an app and be informed if someone you have been near has it. In the west we do not have this in place, but nearly everyone in the west has a smart phone running iOS or Android (with FB, WhatsApp, Instagram, Chrome, etc... installed). If these devices/apps could: (1) Regularly track location data (2) Regularly ask users for their symptoms Then this system could allow people to know if someone they have crossed paths with has the disease or symptoms, so that they could then self isolate. I do not know anyone from these companies, but HackerNews does. Please ask them to consider this suggestion.

thrwaway69 7y ago
We can just give them a leave or have them work from home. Using facial tech to track everyone and isolate them sounds too orwelian for my taste. I understand the implications but that's not going to work like all the other self checks. People will ignore it due to the cost or other reasons.
yorwba 7y ago
> in China they have been using widespread facial recognition technology to track who has been near who. From this you can download an app and be informed if someone you have been near has it. You're severely overestimating the surveillance capabilities of Chinese companies. When a new case is discovered, the government obtains their itinerary by asking them where they went and looking up which long-distance transport they used (tickets for that are tied to government ID, which is checked before boarding). When someone wants to look up whether they were close to someone infected, they can use their ID number to check whether they were e.g. in the same train car, or they have to verify for themselves whether they went to any of the same places. The process is significantly more manual than the pervasive location tracking via facial surveillance you imagine. What the companies you list could do is to allow everyone who has been confirmed infected to publish their location history, and compare against everyone else's. Using self-reported symptoms instead of confirmed cases would lead to a panic, since most people with a cough right now are infected with something other than the coronavirus.

1 points by FailMore 7y ago

thrwaway69 7y ago

We can just give them a leave or have them work from home. Using facial tech to track everyone and isolate them sounds too orwelian for my taste. I understand the implications but that's not going to work like all the other self checks. People will ignore it due to the cost or other reasons.

yorwba 7y ago

> in China they have been using widespread facial recognition technology to track who has been near who. From this you can download an app and be informed if someone you have been near has it. You're severely overestimating the surveillance capabilities of Chinese companies. When a new case is discovered, the government obtains their itinerary by asking them where they went and looking up which long-distance transport they used (tickets for that are tied to government ID, which is checked before boarding). When someone wants to look up whether they were close to someone infected, they can use their ID number to check whether they were e.g. in the same train car, or they have to verify for themselves whether they went to any of the same places. The process is significantly more manual than the pervasive location tracking via facial surveillance you imagine. What the companies you list could do is to allow everyone who has been confirmed infected to publish their location history, and compare against everyone else's. Using self-reported symptoms instead of confirmed cases would lead to a panic, since most people with a cough right now are infected with something other than the coronavirus.