7 ms·

Promising opt-in is a bit disingenuous. These tech giants are creating a technological capability. Whether or not it is opt-in, opt-out or mandatory is then dec

Promising opt-in is a bit disingenuous. These tech giants are creating a technological capability. Whether or not it is opt-in, opt-out or mandatory is then decided by governments, now and in the future. This is of course nothing new. But it's worth noting considering how high the tolerance for extremely intrusive government action currently is and how extremely weak any resistance is bound to be. I'm not saying I'm against contact tracing in the current situation. But that shiny new button that governments get to press will never go away. Edit: Reading the spec, I found a piece of information that may be of interest: This technology allows contact tracing without necessarily revealing the location where that contact has taken place. So that could indeed be a privacy benefit over alternative approaches. https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ContactTracing-BluetoothSpecification.pdf https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/cu...

bwblabs 7y ago
After a quit scan of the protocol and API outlined by Apple and Google: it looks privacy & technically sound to me. I would remove the Android FAILED_REJECTED_OPT_IN status code (https://www.blog.google/documents/55/Android_Contact_Tracing_API.pdf https://www.blog.google/documents/55/Android_Contact_Tracing...). I cannot find it in the Apple API specs, but maybe it's not defined in there yet.
turdnagel 7y ago
Do you really think that this feature has drawn a line in the sand where previously they couldn't track you and now they can?
- BiteCode_dev 7y ago
  No, it was already terrible before. But it was labelled as terrible. I was for the secret service. Now it's going to be culturally accepted, and in the hand regular administrators. This is on order or magnitude worse, for something that was awful.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Because it's being used to fight something even more awful. There are no good choices in a pandemic.
    - zabana 7y ago
      I wish I could share your optimism
    - BiteCode_dev 7y ago
      This is a false dichotomy and assumes there are only two choices: - not handling the pandemic - tracking the population You can get information about people assembling in other ways: - helicopters - intel gathering - cops and army patrolling dressed as civilian - create groups of citizen in town responsible to patrolling And probably many I don't know about. Then you add to that: keeping to communicate with the public, testing a lot, providing masks, etc. The fact you are using this argument shows how much powerful the culture about "the end justify the mean" and "trusts the authority to deal with this" is. I remember the first time I saw Jack Bauer on TV decapitating a terrorist in 24 to get an information. I though, "wow, they are really creating a new normal here". That's what it is about: creating a new normal. And pretending there is no other choice, while nobody is trying to provide any.
      - tastroder 7y ago
        There's no pretending there is no other choice, this already is a proposal for that "other choice". Contact tracing certainly isn't new, it's a required step in tackling many infectious diseases and will happen whether or not it is assisted by digital means. The technical alternatives to the tiny part proposed here are coarse and many of them more invasive in terms of privacy. This proposal is specifically designed to prevent tracking populations, it also limits the number of necessary off switches to the two OS vendors. What exactly is the part of the "new normal" you are worried about here? I hope it's not people walking around with tracking beacons in their pocket, they already do that without giving it a single thought.
      - vsl 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jedberg 7y ago
They already have the shiny button. They can compel cell phone companies to give this data to the government already, without you knowing about it. At least this way you will get some control of the info and you'll know what was collected and have control of it's disclosure (for now). In other words, this is no worse than what the government is already capable of, it just makes it easier for you to share the data with health care providers. The government already has all these abilities.
- driverdan 7y ago
  It's much worse because it won't have judicial oversight.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    Unfortunately neither does existing location data collecting.
- clairity 7y ago
  that isn't a reason to be complacent about furthering governmental/corporate surveillance capabilities. in fact, it should remind us to take away those prior surveillance capabilities, and demand any contact tracing system to give control to users and be fully off-limits to large power structures (e.g., only shared between users and researchers). and being hard to do so is no excuse. we have millions of people we can work on the problem if it's so important to warrant such massive effort.
  - tastroder 7y ago
    People are working on contact tracing, this takes care of one of the harder parts without dictating central control in a pretty sensible manner. Being wary of privacy adverse interests in this context is good but in this context makes little sense. This specification only touches the question of data leaving the device in ways that restrict what the outside party, in an RFC manner MUST wording, can do with the data. It's pretty clear that we will get contact tracing applications in many parts of the world, regardless of any action Apple or Google might have taken. Might as well base it on something that does not compromise the user base wholesale.
tastroder 7y ago
> But that shiny new button that governments get to press will never go away. I think that framing is slightly counterproductive to be honest. The alternative are efforts that, from what I see so far, seem to fall on one of two sides: a) sensible privacy defaults like the proposal by Google/Apple, open development, limited traction in the community and not well connected to political decision makers b) company initiatives, closed developments and promises of openness while working on centralized solutions I feel like your scenario would be more worrying in terms of privacy if Google/Apple didn't introduce this protocol extension. They are essentially forcing the b) group to adapt something sensible. Another positive is that this seems limited to the OS level, whereas both have more extensive infrastructure they could have pushed for but intentionally did not. tl;dr: I think it is a beneficial proposal and well placed, the alternative would likely be worse for the user base.
snarf21 7y ago
This functionality is already live in Find My iPhone. iPhones are performing these associations already. The bigger change is Android joining and sharing the data with researchers.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  You do know that there also is a Find My Device service for Android that runs on all Android phones?
  - foota 7y ago
    This is very different than what you think when you hear "find my iPhone|Android". Iirc the find my iPhone tech does phone to phone association to identify the location. See: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluetooth/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet...
    - tinus_hn 7y ago
      This technology which has been announced but not released would, as your link states, ‘let you track down your stolen laptop, but not let anyone track you. Not even Apple.’ What issue do you have with that?
      - foota 7y ago
        I have nothing against it :-) I was stating that what they were describing is nothing like what was implemented.
- crishoj 7y ago
  The proposed technology is quite different from a service that located located devices. Rather, it would track what devices have been in proximity of each other, and not necessarily where.
  - snarf21 7y ago
grey-area 7y ago
If it's a shiny button users get to press I have no problem with it, even if govs make it mandatory in the short term for things like public transport use or non-essential shops. This should be an app users can install and uninstall, not a feature governments control. PS Governments are already accessing your phone records and tracking behaviour without your permission, along with recording everything you do online for at least 30 days. O Tempora, o mores! https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-government-using-mobile-location-data-to-tackle-outbreak-11960050 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-government-using-mobi... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 7y ago
how high the tolerance for extremely intrusive government action You could also view it as high demand for government functionality, with an accompanying commandeering of the governmental power by the public, which has leverage of its own. Consider, for example, that 1/3 of the country is on a rent strike right now, a proportion which will likely grow. That part of the polity is learning to flex its political muscle for the first time in a while, because the economic and political establishment suddenly finds itself at a severe disadvantage. Of course, the government commands asymmetrical strength through police and (less directly) military force, but that's only effective insofar as disparate groups rarely have broad common interests that transcend regional, economic, or social boundaries. Since the internet provides many of the tools to facilitate collective action and COVID-19 has provided a sufficiently broad incentive, political incumbents are discovering that their powers are only as extensive as the willingness of people to cooperate and that they do in fact require the consent of the governed.
- djrogers 7y ago
  > Consider, for example, that 1/3 of the country is on a rent strike right now Errr - no, no they aren’t. This month had approximately 12% more people miss their rent payment than last April. That’s high - and bad news for people like my retired aunt and uncle, or father in law, who rely on the income from their rental property - but it’s hardly a national rent strike.
  - mobiledev2014 7y ago
    Not sure if the 1/3 is correct or not but consider this- that's the rise for April. Even people who live paycheck to paycheck can often find a way to scrounge together that money if they just lost their job. I'd say reserve judgement until we see how many people pay their rent in May.
    - djrogers 7y ago
      Not paying your rent because you can’t afford it != joining a rent strike. The rent strike movement is a political one, and has little to do with wether or not one can afford rent.
ravenstine 7y ago
It'll be opt-in until an HN headline says it's not and then there are subsequent "post mortem" articles from Google with a bunch of PR gibberish saying "whoops it was an engineering mistake", by which point everyone's become acclimated to their technological presence.
ENOTTY 7y ago
> Edit: Reading the spec, I found a piece of information that may be of interest Shouldn't you read the spec before commenting?
olliej 7y ago
there's no button the government can press - the broadcast data is short term identifiers that can't be linked without know the day key. The identifiers are literally just a random 16 byte number derived sequentially from the day key. The day key is only known if the user elects to publish those keys. If you have a collection of day keys you don't know who published them as there's no device information in that.
sitkack 7y ago
Both Apple and Google have the exact location for all users for all time. Both can tell you right now, who you have been in contact with and how many folks they in turn have been in contact with. They aren't building anything new, in fact, this is much less than they already have.
- sneak 7y ago
  > Both Apple and Google have the exact location for all users for all time. This is a false statement. With location services off, the providers only get coarse location via tower strengths and also via IP geolocation (everything phones home and leaks your IP constantly). It’s not exact, not by a long stretch.
  - TechBro8615 7y ago
    Don’t forget WiFi router Mac address triangulation.
    - sneak 7y ago
      With location services off, I don’t believe that occurs.
      - TechBro8615 7y ago
        Depends on the platform. Ultimately all you need is a list of the routers around you; SSID is often sufficient, but mac adddress is optimal since it can be sent to Google API [0] or similar for geolocation. I'm not sure about Android permissions. With iOS, it used to be (like 2 years ago) that any app could get the list of nearby access points, without permission. But AFAIK that was recently changed to be behind a prompt. Not sure if it's the same permission as location services or a different one. [0] https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/intro https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation...
pcdoodle 7y ago
I am done helping either company. What a breach of trust to hop on the 1984 bandwagon and we haven't even been trough a full cycle of this.

bwblabs 7y ago

After a quit scan of the protocol and API outlined by Apple and Google: it looks privacy & technically sound to me. I would remove the Android FAILED_REJECTED_OPT_IN status code (https://www.blog.google/documents/55/Android_Contact_Tracing_API.pdf https://www.blog.google/documents/55/Android_Contact_Tracing...). I cannot find it in the Apple API specs, but maybe it's not defined in there yet.

turdnagel 7y ago

Do you really think that this feature has drawn a line in the sand where previously they couldn't track you and now they can?

BiteCode_dev 7y ago
No, it was already terrible before. But it was labelled as terrible. I was for the secret service. Now it's going to be culturally accepted, and in the hand regular administrators. This is on order or magnitude worse, for something that was awful.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  Because it's being used to fight something even more awful. There are no good choices in a pandemic.
  - zabana 7y ago
    I wish I could share your optimism
  - BiteCode_dev 7y ago
    This is a false dichotomy and assumes there are only two choices: - not handling the pandemic - tracking the population You can get information about people assembling in other ways: - helicopters - intel gathering - cops and army patrolling dressed as civilian - create groups of citizen in town responsible to patrolling And probably many I don't know about. Then you add to that: keeping to communicate with the public, testing a lot, providing masks, etc. The fact you are using this argument shows how much powerful the culture about "the end justify the mean" and "trusts the authority to deal with this" is. I remember the first time I saw Jack Bauer on TV decapitating a terrorist in 24 to get an information. I though, "wow, they are really creating a new normal here". That's what it is about: creating a new normal. And pretending there is no other choice, while nobody is trying to provide any.
    - tastroder 7y ago
      There's no pretending there is no other choice, this already is a proposal for that "other choice". Contact tracing certainly isn't new, it's a required step in tackling many infectious diseases and will happen whether or not it is assisted by digital means. The technical alternatives to the tiny part proposed here are coarse and many of them more invasive in terms of privacy. This proposal is specifically designed to prevent tracking populations, it also limits the number of necessary off switches to the two OS vendors. What exactly is the part of the "new normal" you are worried about here? I hope it's not people walking around with tracking beacons in their pocket, they already do that without giving it a single thought.
    - vsl 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jedberg 7y ago

They already have the shiny button. They can compel cell phone companies to give this data to the government already, without you knowing about it. At least this way you will get some control of the info and you'll know what was collected and have control of it's disclosure (for now). In other words, this is no worse than what the government is already capable of, it just makes it easier for you to share the data with health care providers. The government already has all these abilities.

driverdan 7y ago
It's much worse because it won't have judicial oversight.
- garmaine 7y ago
  Unfortunately neither does existing location data collecting.
clairity 7y ago
that isn't a reason to be complacent about furthering governmental/corporate surveillance capabilities. in fact, it should remind us to take away those prior surveillance capabilities, and demand any contact tracing system to give control to users and be fully off-limits to large power structures (e.g., only shared between users and researchers). and being hard to do so is no excuse. we have millions of people we can work on the problem if it's so important to warrant such massive effort.
- tastroder 7y ago
  People are working on contact tracing, this takes care of one of the harder parts without dictating central control in a pretty sensible manner. Being wary of privacy adverse interests in this context is good but in this context makes little sense. This specification only touches the question of data leaving the device in ways that restrict what the outside party, in an RFC manner MUST wording, can do with the data. It's pretty clear that we will get contact tracing applications in many parts of the world, regardless of any action Apple or Google might have taken. Might as well base it on something that does not compromise the user base wholesale.

tastroder 7y ago

> But that shiny new button that governments get to press will never go away. I think that framing is slightly counterproductive to be honest. The alternative are efforts that, from what I see so far, seem to fall on one of two sides: a) sensible privacy defaults like the proposal by Google/Apple, open development, limited traction in the community and not well connected to political decision makers b) company initiatives, closed developments and promises of openness while working on centralized solutions I feel like your scenario would be more worrying in terms of privacy if Google/Apple didn't introduce this protocol extension. They are essentially forcing the b) group to adapt something sensible. Another positive is that this seems limited to the OS level, whereas both have more extensive infrastructure they could have pushed for but intentionally did not. tl;dr: I think it is a beneficial proposal and well placed, the alternative would likely be worse for the user base.

snarf21 7y ago

This functionality is already live in Find My iPhone. iPhones are performing these associations already. The bigger change is Android joining and sharing the data with researchers.

tinus_hn 7y ago
You do know that there also is a Find My Device service for Android that runs on all Android phones?
- foota 7y ago
  This is very different than what you think when you hear "find my iPhone|Android". Iirc the find my iPhone tech does phone to phone association to identify the location. See: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluetooth/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet...
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    This technology which has been announced but not released would, as your link states, ‘let you track down your stolen laptop, but not let anyone track you. Not even Apple.’ What issue do you have with that?
    - foota 7y ago
      I have nothing against it :-) I was stating that what they were describing is nothing like what was implemented.
crishoj 7y ago
The proposed technology is quite different from a service that located located devices. Rather, it would track what devices have been in proximity of each other, and not necessarily where.
- snarf21 7y ago

grey-area 7y ago

If it's a shiny button users get to press I have no problem with it, even if govs make it mandatory in the short term for things like public transport use or non-essential shops. This should be an app users can install and uninstall, not a feature governments control. PS Governments are already accessing your phone records and tracking behaviour without your permission, along with recording everything you do online for at least 30 days. O Tempora, o mores! https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-government-using-mobile-location-data-to-tackle-outbreak-11960050 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-government-using-mobi... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 7y ago

how high the tolerance for extremely intrusive government action You could also view it as high demand for government functionality, with an accompanying commandeering of the governmental power by the public, which has leverage of its own. Consider, for example, that 1/3 of the country is on a rent strike right now, a proportion which will likely grow. That part of the polity is learning to flex its political muscle for the first time in a while, because the economic and political establishment suddenly finds itself at a severe disadvantage. Of course, the government commands asymmetrical strength through police and (less directly) military force, but that's only effective insofar as disparate groups rarely have broad common interests that transcend regional, economic, or social boundaries. Since the internet provides many of the tools to facilitate collective action and COVID-19 has provided a sufficiently broad incentive, political incumbents are discovering that their powers are only as extensive as the willingness of people to cooperate and that they do in fact require the consent of the governed.

djrogers 7y ago
> Consider, for example, that 1/3 of the country is on a rent strike right now Errr - no, no they aren’t. This month had approximately 12% more people miss their rent payment than last April. That’s high - and bad news for people like my retired aunt and uncle, or father in law, who rely on the income from their rental property - but it’s hardly a national rent strike.
- mobiledev2014 7y ago
  Not sure if the 1/3 is correct or not but consider this- that's the rise for April. Even people who live paycheck to paycheck can often find a way to scrounge together that money if they just lost their job. I'd say reserve judgement until we see how many people pay their rent in May.
  - djrogers 7y ago
    Not paying your rent because you can’t afford it != joining a rent strike. The rent strike movement is a political one, and has little to do with wether or not one can afford rent.

ravenstine 7y ago

It'll be opt-in until an HN headline says it's not and then there are subsequent "post mortem" articles from Google with a bunch of PR gibberish saying "whoops it was an engineering mistake", by which point everyone's become acclimated to their technological presence.

ENOTTY 7y ago

> Edit: Reading the spec, I found a piece of information that may be of interest Shouldn't you read the spec before commenting?

olliej 7y ago

there's no button the government can press - the broadcast data is short term identifiers that can't be linked without know the day key. The identifiers are literally just a random 16 byte number derived sequentially from the day key. The day key is only known if the user elects to publish those keys. If you have a collection of day keys you don't know who published them as there's no device information in that.

sitkack 7y ago

Both Apple and Google have the exact location for all users for all time. Both can tell you right now, who you have been in contact with and how many folks they in turn have been in contact with. They aren't building anything new, in fact, this is much less than they already have.

sneak 7y ago
> Both Apple and Google have the exact location for all users for all time. This is a false statement. With location services off, the providers only get coarse location via tower strengths and also via IP geolocation (everything phones home and leaks your IP constantly). It’s not exact, not by a long stretch.
- TechBro8615 7y ago
  Don’t forget WiFi router Mac address triangulation.
  - sneak 7y ago
    With location services off, I don’t believe that occurs.
    - TechBro8615 7y ago
      Depends on the platform. Ultimately all you need is a list of the routers around you; SSID is often sufficient, but mac adddress is optimal since it can be sent to Google API [0] or similar for geolocation. I'm not sure about Android permissions. With iOS, it used to be (like 2 years ago) that any app could get the list of nearby access points, without permission. But AFAIK that was recently changed to be behind a prompt. Not sure if it's the same permission as location services or a different one. [0] https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/intro https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation...

pcdoodle 7y ago

I am done helping either company. What a breach of trust to hop on the 1984 bandwagon and we haven't even been trough a full cycle of this.