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Stop spreading FUD. Governments have had access to your location and associates for decades via the mobile phone network. I've worked at a telco where we were

Stop spreading FUD. Governments have had access to your location and associates for decades via the mobile phone network. I've worked at a telco where we were analysing customer's behaviours and almost everyone follows a pattern at some point e.g. going from home, via public transport to work. The resolution isn't high but over time you build up enough samples to accurately determine exactly where they live, work etc.

cc81 7y ago
Yeah, but that is a small part of contact tracing (with law changes needed in some countries). The next step is to have personnel to notify suspected contacts, tell them to isolate themselves and then test them. You need to have enough people for that, you need to have the testing capacity and you need to have people following that order. It will work well if you have very low community spread and can start tracing on cluster level. If you are not there it can still be a good tool but you would probably still need a lot of other restrictions as well.
jrockway 7y ago
Collecting vast swaths of data to know where I live and work, which are literally the first two questions on my income tax return btw, is very different from knowing the name of every person I've been near and the location where I'm near them. We've all seen how these "geofence warrants" have gone -- a lot of innocent people being dragged through the court system for absolutely no reason. If we do end up implementing a centralized contact tracing system, the results will be very interesting. I would love to know the name and location of every lobbyist that my elected representatives have met with, and I'm sure that in the name of public health they won't make any efforts to thwart this tracking.
dkdk8283 7y ago
It’s much worse than FUD: reality. Mapping known associates is significantly more invasive than location privacy.
notyourday 7y ago
> Stop spreading FUD. Governments have had access to your location and associates for decades via the mobile phone network. In that case the governments do not need this silly contact tracing app. They can just use the data they already have.
pdoege 7y ago
This is exactly correct. I helped create the system used by US telcos to track users. We had GPS precision tracking on all users and used big data to geolocate that data against other users, retail establishments, and road locations. This was not nefarious. We used it to find and fix tower, highway issues and market to companies. Users agreed to it as part of their service contract. We were required to sell the data to the government on demand due to CALEA and similar legislation. Those who complain endlessly about AANG largely seem to have no idea of how our communications networks actually work. Your location, activities, banking, etc. are not private, will never be private, have never been private, and it has nothing to do with AANG. The 3 AANG that I have worked are woolly lambs. That F guy is a bit suspicious, but I don't have first hand knowledge.

cc81 7y ago

Yeah, but that is a small part of contact tracing (with law changes needed in some countries). The next step is to have personnel to notify suspected contacts, tell them to isolate themselves and then test them. You need to have enough people for that, you need to have the testing capacity and you need to have people following that order. It will work well if you have very low community spread and can start tracing on cluster level. If you are not there it can still be a good tool but you would probably still need a lot of other restrictions as well.

jrockway 7y ago

Collecting vast swaths of data to know where I live and work, which are literally the first two questions on my income tax return btw, is very different from knowing the name of every person I've been near and the location where I'm near them. We've all seen how these "geofence warrants" have gone -- a lot of innocent people being dragged through the court system for absolutely no reason. If we do end up implementing a centralized contact tracing system, the results will be very interesting. I would love to know the name and location of every lobbyist that my elected representatives have met with, and I'm sure that in the name of public health they won't make any efforts to thwart this tracking.

dkdk8283 7y ago

It’s much worse than FUD: reality. Mapping known associates is significantly more invasive than location privacy.

notyourday 7y ago

> Stop spreading FUD. Governments have had access to your location and associates for decades via the mobile phone network. In that case the governments do not need this silly contact tracing app. They can just use the data they already have.

pdoege 7y ago

This is exactly correct. I helped create the system used by US telcos to track users. We had GPS precision tracking on all users and used big data to geolocate that data against other users, retail establishments, and road locations. This was not nefarious. We used it to find and fix tower, highway issues and market to companies. Users agreed to it as part of their service contract. We were required to sell the data to the government on demand due to CALEA and similar legislation. Those who complain endlessly about AANG largely seem to have no idea of how our communications networks actually work. Your location, activities, banking, etc. are not private, will never be private, have never been private, and it has nothing to do with AANG. The 3 AANG that I have worked are woolly lambs. That F guy is a bit suspicious, but I don't have first hand knowledge.