8 ms·

A Smart Plan to End the U.S. Lockdown Arrives Just in Time

58 points by Reedx 7y ago

hprotagonist 7y ago
Despite being from the american enterprise institute, I think this is the basis of the only sane thing to do. In broad strokes it's what I've seen as the only thing to do for the last several weeks: this is what "flattening the curve" gives us time to line up. I'd like to also see: - wide and free distribution of NPI in the civilian population. At this point i think masking everyone up is sensible. - efficacy data for blood serum transfusions. If that can help provide some immunity in critical populations like delivery people, grocery and pharmacy staff, emergency responders and hospital staff: friggin' great. Keep people we actually need alive and working and remove them from the vector pool temporarily. We're underway with frontline trials with this as of last weekend in NYC. - maybe theraputics to reduce the duration of the disease, if we get lucky. This is the choloroquine/favapadir/... fight that we seem to enjoy having. Do that, and optimistically we can wind up to about 80% normal by fall. We'll get the 20% rest back over the next several years it takes to crank out a vaccine.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
c0nsumer 7y ago
And... that right there would also be a very sufficient surveillance system. As much as I want this to be over, it's really scary hearing about a system where everyone's physical interactions with everyone else is intentionally logged and alerted upon. Even if this app was only really used for a couple months to get us past this hurdle, it'll both condition people to detailed contact tracing and will inevitably remain installed on many devices.
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  k-anonymity is more or less impossible, to boot. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3
  - AaronFriel 7y ago
    Wouldn't a "find my phone" feature like Apple developed be possible to use in this case? See: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2019/06/05/how-does-apple-privately-find-your-offline-devices/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2019/06/05/how-does... I think that with two tweaks, we could cast a pretty wide net and remain privacy preserving: 1. Phones record a 14 day history of every pseudonym and public key they generate, as well as every pseudonym and public key they observe. Observers (potentially exposed contacts) could encrypt these observations with their own public keys and upload them using the same method Apple uses, I believe. 2. People who test positive can opt in to publishing those pairs publicly, which would allow any device to scan its history for those pairs and determine if its owner has been exposed. Or alternatively, Apple or another company could perform this on a user's behalf using the central database. I think the privacy preserving aspect is dependent on users opting in to sharing information for the past 14 days following a covid-19 test. That would allow the contacts to perform the same "have I seen this device" search locally. Edit: This actually seems a lot like "haveibeenpwned" more-so than anything else. As long as a case's device generated unique IDs continuously, logged them privately and broacasted them to nearby devices, then a potentially exposed contact's device could regularly query a central database for hashed prefixes of IDs they've seen in the past 2 weeks. Any person (case) who tests positive could opt-in to publishing all of the IDs their phone has generated in the past 2 weeks. The contacts could then opt in to publishing the location said contact occurred, and a hash of a geofence could also be logged - allowing contacts who have been exposed to opt in to publishing that someone in a particular vicinity had tested positive and was present at a particular date and time.
- xorfish 7y ago
  You don't need surveilance. All recorded contacts can be stored locally and only informed once a positive test is returned. More information here: https://www.pepp-pt.org/ https://www.pepp-pt.org/
  - raphlinus 7y ago
    The word "surveillance" in healthcare is a little different than in regular politics - it basically means gathering information from the field. See [1]. However, we're going to be seeing a lot of discussion about infectious disease surveillance and the more nefarious types. As Maciej Cegłowski has pointed out, we are already doing the nefarious kind on a massive scale in order to target ads more effectively. I do believe there's a middle ground, that this stuff can be done in a way that preserves human rights. But it will require attention and holding those who have the power to abuse the system accountable. [1]: https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/surveillance-infectious-diseases-information-action/2006-04 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/surveillance-in...
  - klik99 7y ago
    My understanding of what you just said - status and contacts are stored locally, and the user will manually mark themselves as "infected" after a test. Presumably the receiver of that notification will have a local status saying "get tested". But when you mark yourself to infected, how does that resolve to notifications for all your contacts? At some point that must hit the cloud and fan out to everyone, meaning the contact list is shared at that point, and with a large enough network becomes identifiable info. Esp if you combine that with skimming contacts. Is the GDPR compliance and on the wire encryption what keeps it private?
    - xorfish 7y ago
      You exchange a one time id with each close proximity. If you test positive, you publish your recorded close proximities ids on a public server. Authorities can supply you with a one time tocken with the test result to append said server. There are certanly more efficient and elegant ways to solve this problem, but it is solvable.
- zepearl 7y ago
  I don't disagree, but I cannot think about any alternative => a compromise is needed... . > ...and will inevitably remain installed on many devices But I really hope that on one hand when this is over the central tracking servers will then be disabled and on the other hand users will be motivated to uninstall the app and/or switch off bluetooth/gps/whatever to save battery (even if tracking by cell tower would still be active, if used by the app).
  - Denzel 7y ago
    Compromise makes sense when both sides are willing to compromise. Speaking broadly, the U.S. government and its institutions (NSA) have proven reluctant to compromise even when the American public is. I’d be willing to compromise here if along with the compromise we replaced “hope” with laws around destroying this technology/platform at a certain defined point in time, along with sufficient criminal penalties for continued usage of the technology/platform after said point in time. If the Patriot Act proved anything, it’s that we as citizens must demand laws with teeth around the deployment and usage of these dangerous technologies.
    - zepearl 7y ago
      Yeah, agree on that.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > And... that right there would also be a very sufficient surveillance system. If you're using "Find My Phone" on your device, you're already relying on this sort of surveillance. I'm not sure what's "scary" about using the exact same feature that many people are in fact relying on for their convenience, to mitigate an ongoing disease outbreak.
  - dx87 7y ago
    The reason it's being used is the difference, the fact that it's the exact same feature is irrelevant. That's like saying you don't understand why someone would have a problem with murder because we already use guns for other things.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      And the reason it's being used is to try and contain the spread of disease. I don't think many people would object to that, either.
_jal 7y ago
This assumes everyone has a cell phone that can run these apps. I personally know a few people who chose not to have one, and a few more who use old or weird phones. And there are plenty more for whom no phone isn't a choice.
- bad_user 7y ago
  If this works you don't need everyone to join, you just need a big enough majority.
  - throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
    It's an odd tradeoff for me. My phone can make phone calls and that's all. I rarely take it out when I leave the house. When I need to I may turn it off and check it just occasionally, but that's really rare, it normally lives at home. I choose that exactly for privacy reasons. You can tell I'm pretty hot on that kind of thing! For this epidemic situation privacy just might have to take 2nd place for the protection of other people. If I became an unknowing carrier then such an app, though repugnant to me, might save other lives. It might be morally right to have a phone just for that. I think it probably is right, though it makes my skin crawl. I don't think the UK government would be stupid enough to try to force people to keep it, but then again...
    - bad_user 7y ago
      Personally I wouldn't trade my privacy for an emergency. But it seems that this app proposed for the EU is built with privacy in mind and if that's the case then I won't mind using it. N.b. in UK and other countries the location of your phone is already tracked via the mobile towers it connects to. It's not a concern only if you leave it at home. So I'm actually hoping for an app that respects privacy because mobile operators have already started sharing this data.
- timr 7y ago
  It's not essential to have 100% coverage, just like it's not essential (or feasible) to have 100% compliance with lockdowns. The one thing this is missing (IMO) is targeted quarantine, which we've seen in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. There will always be clusters that escape surveillance, so you target specific quarantine and "lockdown" tactics, dynamically, to the smallest effective region. In the case of South Korea, they've gone as far as isolating particular buildings for lockdown.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sjrd 7y ago
For a privacy-preserving alternative, see Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (https://www.pepp-pt.org/ https://www.pepp-pt.org/) which was announced today.
adamc 7y ago
Sounds like the beginning of the surveillance state.
- core-questions 7y ago
  You know it's been coming for a long time. I assumed the state already had this information - if they do, clearly they've decided retaining that and not letting people know they have it is more important than whatever Corona-busting results it could have.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  Because it is. The tidbits all these articles conveniently leaves out about these successful responses from (more) democratic countries is that they are closer to Chinese techno-authoritarianism than not: Korea (health officials cross reference credit card bill, location data), Taiwan (tracking bracelet), Singapore (bluetooth app), Hong Kong (out-of-home quarantine). China is basically all of the above piped straight into police big data on top of various human and environmental layers. That's what is required because enforcing compliance doesn't scale with labour and quarantine dodgers are a statistical inevitability. Many of these countries started off with human monitoring. One of the key findings in Wuhan where there is magnitude more spread than these countries is that you have to isolate positive cases from whoever they cohabitate with (family, roommates etc). It requires forced out-of-home quarantine or infected persons WILL infect everyone they live with. These are known lessons that western MSM have deliberately overlooked until it becomes too costly to ignore because it involves interrogation of whether it's politically or culturally possible. E: It's starting to feel like this entire process may reveal itself to be liberal democracies equivalent of "Why Arabs Lose Wars", too many contemporary cultural and political factors that makes effective quarantine impossible.
- ur-whale 7y ago
  The surveillance state has been here for a very long time. They're just making it legitimate.
kube-system 7y ago
Just ask Facebook, they already have this data, don't they?
DeonPenny 7y ago
Wtf this sounds like nero burning of Rome level grabbing of power. Why not just roll out anti-bodies test. I for one will not be participating in this.
davidw 7y ago
For those who might be skeptical when they see AEI, don't be. The article is not a partisan think-piece. It's clear, straightforward, and based on science and reason. Highly recommended. I've been sharing it with people in my city who are concerned about "what happens next?" https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/national-coronavirus-response-a-road-map-to-reopening/ https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/national-corona...
- raphlinus 7y ago
  Agreed. I've been following Scott Gottlieb for a while, he's one of the favorite experts on my Twitter list[1] (carefully curated to avoid political bias). We should be evaluating these kinds of proposals on the basis of competence, and they deliver. There seems to be a convergence of expert opinion around these kinds of proposals, see [2] for a quick survey. ("These two roadmaps are the same as all the others. Variations on a theme.") [1]: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1239639611694911489 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1239639611694911489 [2]: https://twitter.com/j_g_allen/status/1244371548410175501 https://twitter.com/j_g_allen/status/1244371548410175501
- stonogo 7y ago
  I would prefer it to be based on science, reason, and human rights. Any plan that relies on a "national surveillance system" needs revision.
  - davidw 7y ago
    I have a right to know if I've come into contact with someone with COVID-19. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22753425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22753425 It's not 'surveillance' as in eavesdropping on all my calls and emails, it's contact tracing. And it should definitely all come with a 'self destruct' mechanism for when this is over.
    - stonogo 7y ago
      Your assertions about the manner of surveillance are not supported by the given documentation (and are implied to be incorrect in other parts of the document). If they are diligent about that 'self destruct' aspect, I would have a different opinion -- hence "needs revision" instead of a knee-jerk "needs rejection" attitude.
ur-whale 7y ago
https://archive.is/iMVKi https://archive.is/iMVKi
core-questions 7y ago
Of course, it's the "conservative" think tank AEI behind this, wherein we discover that as always, the only thing they want to conserve is the current system, which is heading dangerously toward something perhaps best described as totalitarian liberalism. As if they'll give up having details about every single person's location and who they're interacting with once this crisis is over. As if this will make a serious difference in the curve sufficient to be worth losing all privacy over.
opwieurposiu 7y ago
A smarter plan is to do what has worked in Czech Republic, and just have everyone start wearing masks. Masks are even privacy enhancing! https://www.marketwatch.com/story/should-all-americans-be-wearing-face-masks-to-protect-against-coronavirus-these-scientists-say-yes-2020-03-31 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/should-all-americans-be-we...
- m4rtink 7y ago
  Yep, and since then masks have became mandatory also in Slovakia, in Austria (so far only for shopping) & Israel is starting to require them as well.
- asdkjh345fd 7y ago
  Why on earth was this downvoted? This crazy avoidance of masks in so many western countries is disastrous. We've killed thousands of people, and for the life of me I can not figure out why. Just cutting up old shirts and tying them to our faces would prevent thousands of deaths, why are we still being told "don't wear masks"? https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/28/masks-all-coronavirus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/28/masks-all-...
Someone1234 7y ago
So AEI's solution is mass surveillance of citizens, their movements, and who they came into contact with? And they directly call for that to be a national database: > The AEI authors also call for a national surveillance system to tie local systems together and enable contact tracing throughout the country This is like the 9/11 and the Patriot Act all over again. Why is it that so called conservative organizations who proclaim to love "small government" always push the most privacy invading and draconian solutions? I'd call it turn-key authoritarian but I'm pretty sure the key will start out in the "on" position. Keep in mind this is NOT a solution to keep people safe, this is a solution to allow US businesses to re-open sooner. It actually makes people less safe, and seeks to compensate by robbing people of privacy all so that business can resume.
- mrfusion 7y ago
  I agree. It sounds like an awful solution. Imagine if they did this for herpes.
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    If this ever comes online, I imagine they'll use it for all and any social "ills." Including herpes. It will be like McCarthyism on steroids; guilty by literal proxy.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    I don't know about herpes, but I vaguely recall that people have been prosecuted for spreading HIV. Maybe even convicted, but I don't recall.
- citilife 7y ago
  Why not just an anti-body test & if you feel sick, do a regular test. People with anti-bodies go back to work, people who feel sick get treatment, everyone else is in lockdown. In 12-18 months we have a vaccine and / or are all sick anyway and have anti-bodies. Reality is any complex solution will take longer to implement than the easier solution(s) (just getting antibodies).
- 7y ago
k3oni 7y ago
Not the worst idea(and i mean this in the context of the current situation) and been done in other countries but i have a feeling someone's going to abuse this in the end for other "needs" as it always happens.
gt565k 7y ago
Just give us a mass produced anti-body test we can take already. This is ridiculous. If people can just take an anti-body test to show they are immune to covid-19, they can safely return to work.
- timr 7y ago
  While we absolutely need an antibody test, any such test would currently come up negative for the vast majority of the country. It would basically be a more expensive way of doing what we're doing now.
- usaar333 7y ago
  It's unlikely that even 1% of the United States has been infected at this point. What does the other 99+% do? Infect themselves?
  - hiram112 7y ago
    > What does the other 99+% do? Infect themselves? Yes, sooner or later. You need to get to something like 60%-75% of the population infected and with developed antibodies before you can obtain herd immunity in a given population. Unlike the majority of our politicians, Angela Merkel was praised several weeks ago when she told the German public, no BS, that 3/4 of the population would end up getting the virus, eventually. It's not certain we will even develop a vaccination anytime soon. Corona viruses have been around in live stock for a long time, and no vaccination has been created, even though it'd be very profitable. They've been promising the elusive HIV vaccine for almost 40 years, and we've still got squat. The virus is out. It cannot be locked away again, at least till the vast majority of us are immune or dead. Waiting 'till next season is neither feasible for the economy, nor society, and it's likely you'll just end up getting infected with a stronger mutated version instead of this one a la Spanish Flu Season #2. We cannot keep our population inside cowering in fear forever. If we had unlimited doctors, nurses, ventilators, etc. we wouldn't even bother having this lock down, social distancing, or waiting. We'd carry on as normal, and let the virus take its best shot. There is literally no other way to get out of this.
m3kw9 7y ago
Take ques from other countries that has it under control and it expand on it. The entire country need to be as one when enforcing not by local laws etc, it will be too slow to propagate new orders
matmann2001 7y ago
NO THANKS!
pengaru 7y ago
"Smart" should be in quotes.
p01926 7y ago
GPS data is pretty accurate outdoors, but the second you step inside a store the trace goes completely haywire and bounces round hundreds of meters in all directions. So any warnings will end up so broad as to be useless. Even if just 0.1% of a population are infected, you’ll end up with everyone getting multiple alerts everyday. How does that improve our situation?
- popotamonga 7y ago
  It says bluetooth
  - stuckinside 7y ago
    Permanently disabled on my phone.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  It doesn't work. I live in a high rise. Every time I am in my garage, find my iPhone thinks I am in the building next door. If I am in my kids bedroom, it thinks I am across the street. What if the person above me is in their kitchen at the same time I am in my kitchen?
stuckinside 7y ago
Welp, guess I'm not going anywhere for a long time.
motohagiography 7y ago
Sure, just legally privilege the PII data and its derivatives so that using it for any other purpose than pandemic control sends the CEO of the responsible company to prison. If they aren't willing to include an explicit legal protection for the data, it's bullshit.
hirundo 7y ago
What percentage of the population is it worth losing in order to preserve privacy and resist surveillance? 0.1%? 1%? I'd probably pick a much higher number than you would. Does that make me a bad person?
- vajrabum 7y ago
  How much higher are you willing to go? Where does herd immunity start, maybe at 70% immune? With a 3% death rate (optimistic with those numbers) that gives you about 7 million dead. Absent a vaccine or effective, cheap and widely available antivirals then we could all stay at home for 1.5 years. That might cost more than we can collectively afford. That's probably a no, which leaves aggressive quarantining and contact tracing as likely the only other way to prevent that exponential explosion with its dreadful potential for death.
chicagobob 7y ago
That man is a genius: let's do wide scale testing & contact tracing! Exactly what everyone has been saying for a while now.

58 points by Reedx 7y ago

Despite being from the american enterprise institute, I think this is the basis of the only sane thing to do. In broad strokes it's what I've seen as the only thing to do for the last several weeks: this is what "flattening the curve" gives us time to line up. I'd like to also see: - wide and free distribution of NPI in the civilian population. At this point i think masking everyone up is sensible. - efficacy data for blood serum transfusions. If that can help provide some immunity in critical populations like delivery people, grocery and pharmacy staff, emergency responders and hospital staff: friggin' great. Keep people we actually need alive and working and remove them from the vector pool temporarily. We're underway with frontline trials with this as of last weekend in NYC. - maybe theraputics to reduce the duration of the disease, if we get lucky. This is the choloroquine/favapadir/... fight that we seem to enjoy having. Do that, and optimistically we can wind up to about 80% normal by fall. We'll get the 20% rest back over the next several years it takes to crank out a vaccine.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

c0nsumer 7y ago

And... that right there would also be a very sufficient surveillance system. As much as I want this to be over, it's really scary hearing about a system where everyone's physical interactions with everyone else is intentionally logged and alerted upon. Even if this app was only really used for a couple months to get us past this hurdle, it'll both condition people to detailed contact tracing and will inevitably remain installed on many devices.

hprotagonist 7y ago
k-anonymity is more or less impossible, to boot. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3
- AaronFriel 7y ago
  Wouldn't a "find my phone" feature like Apple developed be possible to use in this case? See: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2019/06/05/how-does-apple-privately-find-your-offline-devices/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2019/06/05/how-does... I think that with two tweaks, we could cast a pretty wide net and remain privacy preserving: 1. Phones record a 14 day history of every pseudonym and public key they generate, as well as every pseudonym and public key they observe. Observers (potentially exposed contacts) could encrypt these observations with their own public keys and upload them using the same method Apple uses, I believe. 2. People who test positive can opt in to publishing those pairs publicly, which would allow any device to scan its history for those pairs and determine if its owner has been exposed. Or alternatively, Apple or another company could perform this on a user's behalf using the central database. I think the privacy preserving aspect is dependent on users opting in to sharing information for the past 14 days following a covid-19 test. That would allow the contacts to perform the same "have I seen this device" search locally. Edit: This actually seems a lot like "haveibeenpwned" more-so than anything else. As long as a case's device generated unique IDs continuously, logged them privately and broacasted them to nearby devices, then a potentially exposed contact's device could regularly query a central database for hashed prefixes of IDs they've seen in the past 2 weeks. Any person (case) who tests positive could opt-in to publishing all of the IDs their phone has generated in the past 2 weeks. The contacts could then opt in to publishing the location said contact occurred, and a hash of a geofence could also be logged - allowing contacts who have been exposed to opt in to publishing that someone in a particular vicinity had tested positive and was present at a particular date and time.
xorfish 7y ago
You don't need surveilance. All recorded contacts can be stored locally and only informed once a positive test is returned. More information here: https://www.pepp-pt.org/ https://www.pepp-pt.org/
- raphlinus 7y ago
  The word "surveillance" in healthcare is a little different than in regular politics - it basically means gathering information from the field. See [1]. However, we're going to be seeing a lot of discussion about infectious disease surveillance and the more nefarious types. As Maciej Cegłowski has pointed out, we are already doing the nefarious kind on a massive scale in order to target ads more effectively. I do believe there's a middle ground, that this stuff can be done in a way that preserves human rights. But it will require attention and holding those who have the power to abuse the system accountable. [1]: https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/surveillance-infectious-diseases-information-action/2006-04 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/surveillance-in...
- klik99 7y ago
  My understanding of what you just said - status and contacts are stored locally, and the user will manually mark themselves as "infected" after a test. Presumably the receiver of that notification will have a local status saying "get tested". But when you mark yourself to infected, how does that resolve to notifications for all your contacts? At some point that must hit the cloud and fan out to everyone, meaning the contact list is shared at that point, and with a large enough network becomes identifiable info. Esp if you combine that with skimming contacts. Is the GDPR compliance and on the wire encryption what keeps it private?
  - xorfish 7y ago
    You exchange a one time id with each close proximity. If you test positive, you publish your recorded close proximities ids on a public server. Authorities can supply you with a one time tocken with the test result to append said server. There are certanly more efficient and elegant ways to solve this problem, but it is solvable.
zepearl 7y ago
I don't disagree, but I cannot think about any alternative => a compromise is needed... . > ...and will inevitably remain installed on many devices But I really hope that on one hand when this is over the central tracking servers will then be disabled and on the other hand users will be motivated to uninstall the app and/or switch off bluetooth/gps/whatever to save battery (even if tracking by cell tower would still be active, if used by the app).
- Denzel 7y ago
  Compromise makes sense when both sides are willing to compromise. Speaking broadly, the U.S. government and its institutions (NSA) have proven reluctant to compromise even when the American public is. I’d be willing to compromise here if along with the compromise we replaced “hope” with laws around destroying this technology/platform at a certain defined point in time, along with sufficient criminal penalties for continued usage of the technology/platform after said point in time. If the Patriot Act proved anything, it’s that we as citizens must demand laws with teeth around the deployment and usage of these dangerous technologies.
  - zepearl 7y ago
    Yeah, agree on that.
zozbot234 7y ago
> And... that right there would also be a very sufficient surveillance system. If you're using "Find My Phone" on your device, you're already relying on this sort of surveillance. I'm not sure what's "scary" about using the exact same feature that many people are in fact relying on for their convenience, to mitigate an ongoing disease outbreak.
- dx87 7y ago
  The reason it's being used is the difference, the fact that it's the exact same feature is irrelevant. That's like saying you don't understand why someone would have a problem with murder because we already use guns for other things.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    And the reason it's being used is to try and contain the spread of disease. I don't think many people would object to that, either.

_jal 7y ago

This assumes everyone has a cell phone that can run these apps. I personally know a few people who chose not to have one, and a few more who use old or weird phones. And there are plenty more for whom no phone isn't a choice.

bad_user 7y ago
If this works you don't need everyone to join, you just need a big enough majority.
- throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
  It's an odd tradeoff for me. My phone can make phone calls and that's all. I rarely take it out when I leave the house. When I need to I may turn it off and check it just occasionally, but that's really rare, it normally lives at home. I choose that exactly for privacy reasons. You can tell I'm pretty hot on that kind of thing! For this epidemic situation privacy just might have to take 2nd place for the protection of other people. If I became an unknowing carrier then such an app, though repugnant to me, might save other lives. It might be morally right to have a phone just for that. I think it probably is right, though it makes my skin crawl. I don't think the UK government would be stupid enough to try to force people to keep it, but then again...
  - bad_user 7y ago
    Personally I wouldn't trade my privacy for an emergency. But it seems that this app proposed for the EU is built with privacy in mind and if that's the case then I won't mind using it. N.b. in UK and other countries the location of your phone is already tracked via the mobile towers it connects to. It's not a concern only if you leave it at home. So I'm actually hoping for an app that respects privacy because mobile operators have already started sharing this data.
timr 7y ago
It's not essential to have 100% coverage, just like it's not essential (or feasible) to have 100% compliance with lockdowns. The one thing this is missing (IMO) is targeted quarantine, which we've seen in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. There will always be clusters that escape surveillance, so you target specific quarantine and "lockdown" tactics, dynamically, to the smallest effective region. In the case of South Korea, they've gone as far as isolating particular buildings for lockdown.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sjrd 7y ago

For a privacy-preserving alternative, see Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (https://www.pepp-pt.org/ https://www.pepp-pt.org/) which was announced today.

adamc 7y ago

Sounds like the beginning of the surveillance state.

core-questions 7y ago
You know it's been coming for a long time. I assumed the state already had this information - if they do, clearly they've decided retaining that and not letting people know they have it is more important than whatever Corona-busting results it could have.
dirtyid 7y ago
Because it is. The tidbits all these articles conveniently leaves out about these successful responses from (more) democratic countries is that they are closer to Chinese techno-authoritarianism than not: Korea (health officials cross reference credit card bill, location data), Taiwan (tracking bracelet), Singapore (bluetooth app), Hong Kong (out-of-home quarantine). China is basically all of the above piped straight into police big data on top of various human and environmental layers. That's what is required because enforcing compliance doesn't scale with labour and quarantine dodgers are a statistical inevitability. Many of these countries started off with human monitoring. One of the key findings in Wuhan where there is magnitude more spread than these countries is that you have to isolate positive cases from whoever they cohabitate with (family, roommates etc). It requires forced out-of-home quarantine or infected persons WILL infect everyone they live with. These are known lessons that western MSM have deliberately overlooked until it becomes too costly to ignore because it involves interrogation of whether it's politically or culturally possible. E: It's starting to feel like this entire process may reveal itself to be liberal democracies equivalent of "Why Arabs Lose Wars", too many contemporary cultural and political factors that makes effective quarantine impossible.
ur-whale 7y ago
The surveillance state has been here for a very long time. They're just making it legitimate.

kube-system 7y ago

Just ask Facebook, they already have this data, don't they?

DeonPenny 7y ago

Wtf this sounds like nero burning of Rome level grabbing of power. Why not just roll out anti-bodies test. I for one will not be participating in this.

davidw 7y ago

For those who might be skeptical when they see AEI, don't be. The article is not a partisan think-piece. It's clear, straightforward, and based on science and reason. Highly recommended. I've been sharing it with people in my city who are concerned about "what happens next?" https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/national-coronavirus-response-a-road-map-to-reopening/ https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/national-corona...

raphlinus 7y ago
Agreed. I've been following Scott Gottlieb for a while, he's one of the favorite experts on my Twitter list[1] (carefully curated to avoid political bias). We should be evaluating these kinds of proposals on the basis of competence, and they deliver. There seems to be a convergence of expert opinion around these kinds of proposals, see [2] for a quick survey. ("These two roadmaps are the same as all the others. Variations on a theme.") [1]: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1239639611694911489 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1239639611694911489 [2]: https://twitter.com/j_g_allen/status/1244371548410175501 https://twitter.com/j_g_allen/status/1244371548410175501
stonogo 7y ago
I would prefer it to be based on science, reason, and human rights. Any plan that relies on a "national surveillance system" needs revision.
- davidw 7y ago
  I have a right to know if I've come into contact with someone with COVID-19. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22753425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22753425 It's not 'surveillance' as in eavesdropping on all my calls and emails, it's contact tracing. And it should definitely all come with a 'self destruct' mechanism for when this is over.
  - stonogo 7y ago
    Your assertions about the manner of surveillance are not supported by the given documentation (and are implied to be incorrect in other parts of the document). If they are diligent about that 'self destruct' aspect, I would have a different opinion -- hence "needs revision" instead of a knee-jerk "needs rejection" attitude.

ur-whale 7y ago

https://archive.is/iMVKi https://archive.is/iMVKi

core-questions 7y ago

Of course, it's the "conservative" think tank AEI behind this, wherein we discover that as always, the only thing they want to conserve is the current system, which is heading dangerously toward something perhaps best described as totalitarian liberalism. As if they'll give up having details about every single person's location and who they're interacting with once this crisis is over. As if this will make a serious difference in the curve sufficient to be worth losing all privacy over.

opwieurposiu 7y ago

A smarter plan is to do what has worked in Czech Republic, and just have everyone start wearing masks. Masks are even privacy enhancing! https://www.marketwatch.com/story/should-all-americans-be-wearing-face-masks-to-protect-against-coronavirus-these-scientists-say-yes-2020-03-31 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/should-all-americans-be-we...

m4rtink 7y ago
Yep, and since then masks have became mandatory also in Slovakia, in Austria (so far only for shopping) & Israel is starting to require them as well.
asdkjh345fd 7y ago
Why on earth was this downvoted? This crazy avoidance of masks in so many western countries is disastrous. We've killed thousands of people, and for the life of me I can not figure out why. Just cutting up old shirts and tying them to our faces would prevent thousands of deaths, why are we still being told "don't wear masks"? https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/28/masks-all-coronavirus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/28/masks-all-...

Someone1234 7y ago

So AEI's solution is mass surveillance of citizens, their movements, and who they came into contact with? And they directly call for that to be a national database: > The AEI authors also call for a national surveillance system to tie local systems together and enable contact tracing throughout the country This is like the 9/11 and the Patriot Act all over again. Why is it that so called conservative organizations who proclaim to love "small government" always push the most privacy invading and draconian solutions? I'd call it turn-key authoritarian but I'm pretty sure the key will start out in the "on" position. Keep in mind this is NOT a solution to keep people safe, this is a solution to allow US businesses to re-open sooner. It actually makes people less safe, and seeks to compensate by robbing people of privacy all so that business can resume.

mrfusion 7y ago
I agree. It sounds like an awful solution. Imagine if they did this for herpes.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  If this ever comes online, I imagine they'll use it for all and any social "ills." Including herpes. It will be like McCarthyism on steroids; guilty by literal proxy.
- mirimir 7y ago
  I don't know about herpes, but I vaguely recall that people have been prosecuted for spreading HIV. Maybe even convicted, but I don't recall.
citilife 7y ago
Why not just an anti-body test & if you feel sick, do a regular test. People with anti-bodies go back to work, people who feel sick get treatment, everyone else is in lockdown. In 12-18 months we have a vaccine and / or are all sick anyway and have anti-bodies. Reality is any complex solution will take longer to implement than the easier solution(s) (just getting antibodies).
7y ago

k3oni 7y ago

Not the worst idea(and i mean this in the context of the current situation) and been done in other countries but i have a feeling someone's going to abuse this in the end for other "needs" as it always happens.

gt565k 7y ago

Just give us a mass produced anti-body test we can take already. This is ridiculous. If people can just take an anti-body test to show they are immune to covid-19, they can safely return to work.

timr 7y ago
While we absolutely need an antibody test, any such test would currently come up negative for the vast majority of the country. It would basically be a more expensive way of doing what we're doing now.
usaar333 7y ago
It's unlikely that even 1% of the United States has been infected at this point. What does the other 99+% do? Infect themselves?
- hiram112 7y ago
  > What does the other 99+% do? Infect themselves? Yes, sooner or later. You need to get to something like 60%-75% of the population infected and with developed antibodies before you can obtain herd immunity in a given population. Unlike the majority of our politicians, Angela Merkel was praised several weeks ago when she told the German public, no BS, that 3/4 of the population would end up getting the virus, eventually. It's not certain we will even develop a vaccination anytime soon. Corona viruses have been around in live stock for a long time, and no vaccination has been created, even though it'd be very profitable. They've been promising the elusive HIV vaccine for almost 40 years, and we've still got squat. The virus is out. It cannot be locked away again, at least till the vast majority of us are immune or dead. Waiting 'till next season is neither feasible for the economy, nor society, and it's likely you'll just end up getting infected with a stronger mutated version instead of this one a la Spanish Flu Season #2. We cannot keep our population inside cowering in fear forever. If we had unlimited doctors, nurses, ventilators, etc. we wouldn't even bother having this lock down, social distancing, or waiting. We'd carry on as normal, and let the virus take its best shot. There is literally no other way to get out of this.

m3kw9 7y ago

Take ques from other countries that has it under control and it expand on it. The entire country need to be as one when enforcing not by local laws etc, it will be too slow to propagate new orders

matmann2001 7y ago

NO THANKS!

pengaru 7y ago

"Smart" should be in quotes.

p01926 7y ago

GPS data is pretty accurate outdoors, but the second you step inside a store the trace goes completely haywire and bounces round hundreds of meters in all directions. So any warnings will end up so broad as to be useless. Even if just 0.1% of a population are infected, you’ll end up with everyone getting multiple alerts everyday. How does that improve our situation?

popotamonga 7y ago
It says bluetooth
- stuckinside 7y ago
  Permanently disabled on my phone.
OrangeMango 7y ago
It doesn't work. I live in a high rise. Every time I am in my garage, find my iPhone thinks I am in the building next door. If I am in my kids bedroom, it thinks I am across the street. What if the person above me is in their kitchen at the same time I am in my kitchen?

stuckinside 7y ago

Welp, guess I'm not going anywhere for a long time.

motohagiography 7y ago

Sure, just legally privilege the PII data and its derivatives so that using it for any other purpose than pandemic control sends the CEO of the responsible company to prison. If they aren't willing to include an explicit legal protection for the data, it's bullshit.

hirundo 7y ago

What percentage of the population is it worth losing in order to preserve privacy and resist surveillance? 0.1%? 1%? I'd probably pick a much higher number than you would. Does that make me a bad person?

vajrabum 7y ago
How much higher are you willing to go? Where does herd immunity start, maybe at 70% immune? With a 3% death rate (optimistic with those numbers) that gives you about 7 million dead. Absent a vaccine or effective, cheap and widely available antivirals then we could all stay at home for 1.5 years. That might cost more than we can collectively afford. That's probably a no, which leaves aggressive quarantining and contact tracing as likely the only other way to prevent that exponential explosion with its dreadful potential for death.

chicagobob 7y ago

That man is a genius: let's do wide scale testing & contact tracing! Exactly what everyone has been saying for a while now.