5 ms·

I can't trust the authors when they start with a false premise: "The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly raised the need for technological solutions capable to trace

I can't trust the authors when they start with a false premise: "The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly raised the need for technological solutions capable to trace contacts of people and provide location-based analytics". No, it has not created any such "need". "It's for yours and _everyone's_ health" is the most common premise used to reduce privacy and increase control over people. No!

newbamboo 5y ago
Yes. There is a demonstrable lack of need. Contact tracing has not worked and will not work for covid. As new variants emerge that spread faster, this will become even more true. The best measures against covid appear to be old fashioned common sense practices. Pay attention to yourself and if you’re sick stay home. Don’t cough, sneeze or breath on each other unnecessarily. Stand a bit further apart. Be outdoors more.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Even if it worked, it would be trading too much. We already accepted destroying conviviality, limiting freedom of movement and taking a vaccine that has been fast tracked. At this point, I think I've done my part in concessions, especially in regards to following the directives of people and groups that have shown not to be trusted multiple times in the past and have been spreading so many contradictory messages in the last 2 years. So no, officially accepting global tracking, in addition to the secret and scandalous one, is a no-go.
- fomine3 5y ago
  > As new variants emerge that spread faster, this will become even more true. I thought opposite. Contact tracing should work well for strongly spreading (without much contacting) variant because it just trace nearby user rather than "contact".
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    faster spread will lower the signal-to-noise ratio and put too much restrictions on scociety. uk already had to dial back it's contact tracing sesitivity.
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    Faster spread likely means less severe symptoms. Not necessarily but ceteris paribus most likely.
- rstuart4133 5y ago
  > Contact tracing has not worked and will not work for covid. As an Australian, I can say with certainty contract trace does work for COVID. It is one of the tools Australia uses to keep it's cases near 0. There are caveats of course. Contract tracing's big brother is the lock down, where everybody is forced to isolate. It's the big brother because all contact tracing does is limit the lock down to those who have been exposed. They are found by tracing the contacts of existing infections. Contact tracing achilles heel it is labour intensive. It works beautifully, right up until the number of new infections overwhelm the labour force available to do the contact tracing. So in Australia contact trace is always paired with an initial lock down, to give the contact tracers a head start. Delta in particular with its R0 of 7 can easily overwhelm the man power before within a week if you don't stop it dead. (This has now happened in our most libertarian state, forcing said libertarian state into the longest and invasive lock downs we've seen in Australia.) In Australia contact tracing was done with no technological help whatsoever at the start. It was all via interviews. Now we have QR codes everywhere, which you are by law required to scan when directed to do so by the Chief Medical Officer, which is invariable while there is local transmission. This is done as a force multiplier of course - it both raises the number of infections needed to overwhelm the system, and speeds up shutting down the outbreak. Time is money, and in this case the money is measured literally in billions. The sad and bizarre outcome is those QR codes are very invasive - we had a much better solution available. If you visit places that must have QR codes (which broadly is any business), you by law must take a smart phone with the contact tracing app installed. You have to enter all your details into the contact tracing app. When you scan the QR code it uploads the exact time and place to government servers. The uploaded information has already been leaked beyond it's intended use. In contrast the original bluetooth tracing app (and probably this 5G solution) was designed to never leak your position unless you become a close contact of a person contacted by the contact tracers. They were far more private and resistant to abuse. Yet Apple and Google effectively made them impossible to use, due to erstwhile "privacy considerations". And in doing so, forced the adoption of solutions where, as far as I can tell, privacy was never a design consideration.
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    I would like to see more evidence contact tracing works in absence of lockdowns and other social distancing measures. Early advocates pointed to South Korea as evidence. And now: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/29/once-a-covid-success-story-south-korea-sweats-through-summer-of-delta-surge https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/29/once-a-covid-s... My sense is, at the very least it doesn’t scale.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
> "It's for yours and _everyone's_ health" is the most common premise used to reduce privacy and increase control over people. I feel this one is rather new. People are by now trained to recognize the "we need surveillance due to kiddy porn" pattern. Many people are still unaware that the assumptions underlying most of the covid counter-measures are flawed and not supported by the data.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Whether the assumptions are flawed or not, the infrastructure necessary to track all the COVID cases and contacts is the same one that could be used to track all the Jews (substitute any minority group here).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

newbamboo 5y ago

Yes. There is a demonstrable lack of need. Contact tracing has not worked and will not work for covid. As new variants emerge that spread faster, this will become even more true. The best measures against covid appear to be old fashioned common sense practices. Pay attention to yourself and if you’re sick stay home. Don’t cough, sneeze or breath on each other unnecessarily. Stand a bit further apart. Be outdoors more.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Even if it worked, it would be trading too much. We already accepted destroying conviviality, limiting freedom of movement and taking a vaccine that has been fast tracked. At this point, I think I've done my part in concessions, especially in regards to following the directives of people and groups that have shown not to be trusted multiple times in the past and have been spreading so many contradictory messages in the last 2 years. So no, officially accepting global tracking, in addition to the secret and scandalous one, is a no-go.
fomine3 5y ago
> As new variants emerge that spread faster, this will become even more true. I thought opposite. Contact tracing should work well for strongly spreading (without much contacting) variant because it just trace nearby user rather than "contact".
- hansel_der 5y ago
  faster spread will lower the signal-to-noise ratio and put too much restrictions on scociety. uk already had to dial back it's contact tracing sesitivity.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  Faster spread likely means less severe symptoms. Not necessarily but ceteris paribus most likely.
rstuart4133 5y ago
> Contact tracing has not worked and will not work for covid. As an Australian, I can say with certainty contract trace does work for COVID. It is one of the tools Australia uses to keep it's cases near 0. There are caveats of course. Contract tracing's big brother is the lock down, where everybody is forced to isolate. It's the big brother because all contact tracing does is limit the lock down to those who have been exposed. They are found by tracing the contacts of existing infections. Contact tracing achilles heel it is labour intensive. It works beautifully, right up until the number of new infections overwhelm the labour force available to do the contact tracing. So in Australia contact trace is always paired with an initial lock down, to give the contact tracers a head start. Delta in particular with its R0 of 7 can easily overwhelm the man power before within a week if you don't stop it dead. (This has now happened in our most libertarian state, forcing said libertarian state into the longest and invasive lock downs we've seen in Australia.) In Australia contact tracing was done with no technological help whatsoever at the start. It was all via interviews. Now we have QR codes everywhere, which you are by law required to scan when directed to do so by the Chief Medical Officer, which is invariable while there is local transmission. This is done as a force multiplier of course - it both raises the number of infections needed to overwhelm the system, and speeds up shutting down the outbreak. Time is money, and in this case the money is measured literally in billions. The sad and bizarre outcome is those QR codes are very invasive - we had a much better solution available. If you visit places that must have QR codes (which broadly is any business), you by law must take a smart phone with the contact tracing app installed. You have to enter all your details into the contact tracing app. When you scan the QR code it uploads the exact time and place to government servers. The uploaded information has already been leaked beyond it's intended use. In contrast the original bluetooth tracing app (and probably this 5G solution) was designed to never leak your position unless you become a close contact of a person contacted by the contact tracers. They were far more private and resistant to abuse. Yet Apple and Google effectively made them impossible to use, due to erstwhile "privacy considerations". And in doing so, forced the adoption of solutions where, as far as I can tell, privacy was never a design consideration.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  I would like to see more evidence contact tracing works in absence of lockdowns and other social distancing measures. Early advocates pointed to South Korea as evidence. And now: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/29/once-a-covid-success-story-south-korea-sweats-through-summer-of-delta-surge https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/29/once-a-covid-s... My sense is, at the very least it doesn’t scale.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

> "It's for yours and _everyone's_ health" is the most common premise used to reduce privacy and increase control over people. I feel this one is rather new. People are by now trained to recognize the "we need surveillance due to kiddy porn" pattern. Many people are still unaware that the assumptions underlying most of the covid counter-measures are flawed and not supported by the data.

throwawayboise 5y ago
Whether the assumptions are flawed or not, the infrastructure necessary to track all the COVID cases and contacts is the same one that could be used to track all the Jews (substitute any minority group here).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]