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This doesn't appear to be a way for the government or tech companies to track people. Looking through the API docs I think it's designed just to alert people wh

This doesn't appear to be a way for the government or tech companies to track people. Looking through the API docs I think it's designed just to alert people who may have been exposed. It lets someone identify as Covid-19 positive and then if people have come into contact with them, you can be alerted. Most of the processing happens on device and it doesn't use location data. It looks like it would be very hard to abuse by governments or businesses, but I'm not an expert on these kind of things.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
It is possible I am not expressing myself clearly. The API may not directly access location data ( though I have a hard time believing that either ). Processing may be local, but I just find it very difficult to believe that the information gleamed from that common platform would not be used. And if it can be used, it will be used. And then it will correlated with information that was previously gathered via regular means. I am not sure how that is not a concern? To Trump's credit, he seems hesitant to go all in on this front. edit: There is something that occurred to me after writing this. FB had an API at the beginning of their game when they were shooting to get developers' attention. They did. As the leaked documents show what really end up happening, API evolved in ways that benefited big boys. I guess my rambling point is that whatever current specs say, may quickly become rather distant past.
ehsankia 7y ago
Indeed, if I understand correct, the device locally stores a bunch of keys of people you've been in contact to, and there is no way of working backward from the keys to who it was, and these keys also change daily. Then when someone marks themselves as infected for days A through Z, their keys for those days is sent to devices, where the devices check locally if they have the given person-day keys stored. Do I understand this correctly? It's almost all done locally, there's nothing about location, and almost nothing is send up until you mark yourself as infected, right? EDIT: This is the best high level explained I've found: https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contact_Tracing_Using_BLE.pdf https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contac...

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

It is possible I am not expressing myself clearly. The API may not directly access location data ( though I have a hard time believing that either ). Processing may be local, but I just find it very difficult to believe that the information gleamed from that common platform would not be used. And if it can be used, it will be used. And then it will correlated with information that was previously gathered via regular means. I am not sure how that is not a concern? To Trump's credit, he seems hesitant to go all in on this front. edit: There is something that occurred to me after writing this. FB had an API at the beginning of their game when they were shooting to get developers' attention. They did. As the leaked documents show what really end up happening, API evolved in ways that benefited big boys. I guess my rambling point is that whatever current specs say, may quickly become rather distant past.

ehsankia 7y ago

Indeed, if I understand correct, the device locally stores a bunch of keys of people you've been in contact to, and there is no way of working backward from the keys to who it was, and these keys also change daily. Then when someone marks themselves as infected for days A through Z, their keys for those days is sent to devices, where the devices check locally if they have the given person-day keys stored. Do I understand this correctly? It's almost all done locally, there's nothing about location, and almost nothing is send up until you mark yourself as infected, right? EDIT: This is the best high level explained I've found: https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contact_Tracing_Using_BLE.pdf https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contac...