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Everything in this article is completely illogical and baseless. We can't trust Apple/Google to manage the anonymous data behind Contract Tracing but we can fo

Everything in this article is completely illogical and baseless. We can't trust Apple/Google to manage the anonymous data behind Contract Tracing but we can for our photos, phone calls, messages, web history, app data and GPS locations. And we have to be fearful because this anonymous data is somehow going to be linked by Apple/Google to real persons and used for mass surveillance. But yet they could have done this for years without needing GACT as an excuse.

zozbot234 7y ago
Right. They've done the exact same tracing for years as part of the "Find my phone" feature, but now it becomes problematic when it's used to mitigate a pandemic outbreak? That makes zero sense.
- threeseed 7y ago
  In fact pretty sure Apple has already implemented this functionality for their upcoming Apple Tags product. They have a patent on it and it works very similar to GACT i.e. by anonymously recording Bluetooth identifiers.
- valleyer 7y ago
  The contact tracing stuff is not going to be based on location but rather on bluetooth beacons from nearby phones. I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. See https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ContactTracing-BluetoothSpecificationv1.1.pdf https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/cu...: "The Contact Tracing Bluetooth Specification does not use location for proximity detection. It strictly uses Bluetooth beaconing to detect proximity."
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    Don't be naïve. 1. the telcos have months - if not years - of LAC update data stored for every phone. They know where you sleep, who visits and where you work and shop; 2. they analyse the CDR for every call/SMS send and received (caller and receiving party cells) [look at your spam SMS with a jaundiced eye]; 3. they 'ping' thousands of phones* daily to trilaterate the location to metres (and/or A-GPS, TDOA, etc.) 4. they analyse the voice and data handover records. * The preferred way to do this with a veneer of deniability is for the authorities to add in a few phones into the known associates list of phones to be monitored in an otherwise legitimate drug or terrorist warrant. They judges will never know (and certainly don't ask).
    - jmull 7y ago
      I wonder what you think any of that has to do with Bluetooth-based contact tracing?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- antpls 7y ago
  I'm not ready to risk giving up more privacy to "mitigate a pandemic outbreak". I believe there are other ways to fight viruses, we (the world) should invest massively in biological R&D to better understand, protect, control and heal our body rather than track people. Tracking people is a low-level solution that misses the bigger picture. Maybe this will be possible in 50 or 200 years, but the world we currently live in is not ready to both track people and respect basic human rights, in my opinion. By the way : same argument is valid for nuclear weapons. Why don't we accept that all countries get nuclear weapons? Because it would be dangerous in the wrong hands.
  - rrdharan 7y ago
    You can always not use the app, and stay at home indefinitely. Not doing participating yet continuing to move about society as it starts to reopen, prior to a vaccine, seems more morally problematic in my mind.
  - prh8 7y ago
    So you'd rather let this pandemic continue for many months while we wait for all that research to result in anything useful?
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      Not months. Years.
sildur 7y ago
This allows to track who was in contact with who. That is something new.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Really ? Surreptitiously turn on BT pairing / location on each device. Far easier to surmise this information
- qzervaas 7y ago
  It’s not new. Like sibling comment says, this is how new Find My features work. Also, the Apple implementation requires user to manually approve access to user private tokens each and every time for apps trying to access them.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Sorry to burst your bubble but governments have had access to this data for decades via their data siphoning agreements with telcos. I used to work at a telco and we absolutely knew your location based off base station triangulation. And we knew who you called and messaged and who was nearby to you.
  - aembleton 7y ago
    Why isn't this data used then for contact tracing?
    - rrdharan 7y ago
      The whole point of GACT is to prevent governments from going that route. i.e. most folks in favor of GACT adoption see the alternative path, of using actual location data without opt in and operated by the government, as a scarier erosion of privacy.
    - fourthark 7y ago
      Tower triangulation doesn’t have very much precision, for one thing.
    - 7y ago
cm2187 7y ago
I tend to agree that it is baseless but not the for the reasons you mention. I don't trust Apple or Google with my personal data. But from what I understand of this protocol, no personal data is shared with Google or Apple, only a randomly generated identifier IF you elect to declare yourself contaminated. And this identifier has no other value to anyone other than to notify the holders of smartphones that have been in close proximity with you over a limited period. What the article is saying is that they don't trust big tech to stick to that protocol.
- drclau 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, what brand of mobile phone do you use?
tarkin2 7y ago
This makes it easier and more socially ingrained. Privacy isn’t on/off. Just because it was possible indirectly before, it doesn’t mean direct tracing should be waved-through.
solinent 7y ago
> We can't trust Apple/Google to manage the anonymous data behind Contract Tracing but we can for our photos, phone calls, messages, web history, app data and GPS locations. Just because our rights are already eroded doesn't mean we should give up the fight and disable our freedom. Nobody said we should trust Google/Apple with any of that. This tracking of our anonymous data should only be allowed to be unencrypted by warrant. All data produced by the device stored on the cloud should be encrypted, unaccessable to Google and Apple. Instead of blindly trusting corporations, we could implement regulations, allowing oversight and preventing unreasonable searches. In any case, I use an Android phone and Google can't access my photos, calls, messages, web history, app data, or GPS locations. I've chosen a radio firmware which completely disables the GPS. Looks like it's about time to get rid of Google completely from my Google phone.
jekoeoe9njdjr 7y ago
This is a pathetic attack Groups have been calling out the privacy concern of the companies you tech fetishists provide a market for for decades now I had ethics in engineering classes in the 90s that discussed it as well This article is a takedown of a particular situation that’s especially relevant given current events Did you ask the author how they feel about those other things or just armchair expert knee jerk into ad hominem? The author wasn’t obliged to turn a specific topic into a thesis on privacy in general. dang: shut off the comment section. HN is /. level useless
blub 7y ago
You have some guts to call the article baseless and then claim "we" can trust Apple and Google. Actually you can't trust them to manage the other things either. Google is notorious for abusing user data for advertising purposes and their dark patterns. Two recent investigations by the Norwegian data protection agency highlights this clearly. Anything on iOS touching iCloud is assumed to be accessible to at least the government where the phone user resides. Their on-device privacy's much better, but the defaults are to use iCloud extensively.

zozbot234 7y ago

Right. They've done the exact same tracing for years as part of the "Find my phone" feature, but now it becomes problematic when it's used to mitigate a pandemic outbreak? That makes zero sense.

threeseed 7y ago
In fact pretty sure Apple has already implemented this functionality for their upcoming Apple Tags product. They have a patent on it and it works very similar to GACT i.e. by anonymously recording Bluetooth identifiers.
valleyer 7y ago
The contact tracing stuff is not going to be based on location but rather on bluetooth beacons from nearby phones. I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. See https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ContactTracing-BluetoothSpecificationv1.1.pdf https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/cu...: "The Contact Tracing Bluetooth Specification does not use location for proximity detection. It strictly uses Bluetooth beaconing to detect proximity."
- pinkfoot 7y ago
  Don't be naïve. 1. the telcos have months - if not years - of LAC update data stored for every phone. They know where you sleep, who visits and where you work and shop; 2. they analyse the CDR for every call/SMS send and received (caller and receiving party cells) [look at your spam SMS with a jaundiced eye]; 3. they 'ping' thousands of phones* daily to trilaterate the location to metres (and/or A-GPS, TDOA, etc.) 4. they analyse the voice and data handover records. * The preferred way to do this with a veneer of deniability is for the authorities to add in a few phones into the known associates list of phones to be monitored in an otherwise legitimate drug or terrorist warrant. They judges will never know (and certainly don't ask).
  - jmull 7y ago
    I wonder what you think any of that has to do with Bluetooth-based contact tracing?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
antpls 7y ago
I'm not ready to risk giving up more privacy to "mitigate a pandemic outbreak". I believe there are other ways to fight viruses, we (the world) should invest massively in biological R&D to better understand, protect, control and heal our body rather than track people. Tracking people is a low-level solution that misses the bigger picture. Maybe this will be possible in 50 or 200 years, but the world we currently live in is not ready to both track people and respect basic human rights, in my opinion. By the way : same argument is valid for nuclear weapons. Why don't we accept that all countries get nuclear weapons? Because it would be dangerous in the wrong hands.
- rrdharan 7y ago
  You can always not use the app, and stay at home indefinitely. Not doing participating yet continuing to move about society as it starts to reopen, prior to a vaccine, seems more morally problematic in my mind.
- prh8 7y ago
  So you'd rather let this pandemic continue for many months while we wait for all that research to result in anything useful?
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Not months. Years.

sildur 7y ago

This allows to track who was in contact with who. That is something new.

mav3rick 7y ago
Really ? Surreptitiously turn on BT pairing / location on each device. Far easier to surmise this information
qzervaas 7y ago
It’s not new. Like sibling comment says, this is how new Find My features work. Also, the Apple implementation requires user to manually approve access to user private tokens each and every time for apps trying to access them.
threeseed 7y ago
Sorry to burst your bubble but governments have had access to this data for decades via their data siphoning agreements with telcos. I used to work at a telco and we absolutely knew your location based off base station triangulation. And we knew who you called and messaged and who was nearby to you.
- aembleton 7y ago
  Why isn't this data used then for contact tracing?
  - rrdharan 7y ago
    The whole point of GACT is to prevent governments from going that route. i.e. most folks in favor of GACT adoption see the alternative path, of using actual location data without opt in and operated by the government, as a scarier erosion of privacy.
  - fourthark 7y ago
    Tower triangulation doesn’t have very much precision, for one thing.
  - 7y ago

cm2187 7y ago

I tend to agree that it is baseless but not the for the reasons you mention. I don't trust Apple or Google with my personal data. But from what I understand of this protocol, no personal data is shared with Google or Apple, only a randomly generated identifier IF you elect to declare yourself contaminated. And this identifier has no other value to anyone other than to notify the holders of smartphones that have been in close proximity with you over a limited period. What the article is saying is that they don't trust big tech to stick to that protocol.

drclau 7y ago
Out of curiosity, what brand of mobile phone do you use?

tarkin2 7y ago

This makes it easier and more socially ingrained. Privacy isn’t on/off. Just because it was possible indirectly before, it doesn’t mean direct tracing should be waved-through.

solinent 7y ago

> We can't trust Apple/Google to manage the anonymous data behind Contract Tracing but we can for our photos, phone calls, messages, web history, app data and GPS locations. Just because our rights are already eroded doesn't mean we should give up the fight and disable our freedom. Nobody said we should trust Google/Apple with any of that. This tracking of our anonymous data should only be allowed to be unencrypted by warrant. All data produced by the device stored on the cloud should be encrypted, unaccessable to Google and Apple. Instead of blindly trusting corporations, we could implement regulations, allowing oversight and preventing unreasonable searches. In any case, I use an Android phone and Google can't access my photos, calls, messages, web history, app data, or GPS locations. I've chosen a radio firmware which completely disables the GPS. Looks like it's about time to get rid of Google completely from my Google phone.

jekoeoe9njdjr 7y ago

This is a pathetic attack Groups have been calling out the privacy concern of the companies you tech fetishists provide a market for for decades now I had ethics in engineering classes in the 90s that discussed it as well This article is a takedown of a particular situation that’s especially relevant given current events Did you ask the author how they feel about those other things or just armchair expert knee jerk into ad hominem? The author wasn’t obliged to turn a specific topic into a thesis on privacy in general. dang: shut off the comment section. HN is /. level useless

blub 7y ago

You have some guts to call the article baseless and then claim "we" can trust Apple and Google. Actually you can't trust them to manage the other things either. Google is notorious for abusing user data for advertising purposes and their dark patterns. Two recent investigations by the Norwegian data protection agency highlights this clearly. Anything on iOS touching iCloud is assumed to be accessible to at least the government where the phone user resides. Their on-device privacy's much better, but the defaults are to use iCloud extensively.