Oh no, will somebody think of civil liberties?

[AtW]

“ Apple and Google are jointly developing technology to alert people if they have recently come into contact with others found to be infected with coronavirus.

They hope to initially help third-party contact-tracing apps run efficiently.

But ultimately, they aim to do away with the need to download dedicated apps, to encourage the practice.

The two companies believe their approach - designed to keep users, whose participation would be voluntary, anonymous - addresses privacy concerns.

Their contact-tracing method would work by using a smartphone's Bluetooth signals to determine to whom the owner had recently been in proximity for long enough to have established contagion a risk.

If one of those people later tested positive for the Covid-19 virus, a warning would be sent to the original handset owner.

No GPS location data or personal information would be recorded.”

Coronavirus: Apple and Google team up to contact trace Covid-19 - BBC News

Don’t worry - it will be totally up to the user to opt out, just like it will be up to private establishments to refuse entrance to who who did not have it on for at least two-three weeks before entry.

[AtW]

Moronic idea - will be lots of “Johns” faking it to scare people.

Only way is Govt app - test results fed by Govt to prevent spoofing

[NickFitz]

One problem with contact tracing apps on iOS is that the basic idea is to use Bluetooth to identify devices near any given device. However, Apple has always imposed restrictions on how third party iOS apps use Bluetooth because of privacy concerns, and probably also because of the possible deleterious effect on battery life. The result is that an app can only use the Bluetooth capability that allows contact tracing to work if the app is in the foreground - in other words, if people have that app running and prevent their phone going to sleep. This, of course, has an even worse effect on battery life. And people just aren’t likely to be diligent enough to remember do it, or even willing to, especially if it means their phone battery dies multiple times a day

So I would expect that one thing they might do in the short term is to make the relevant Bluetooth API available to third party apps in the background, even if it results in a (much slighter) hit to battery life.

It will be interesting to see how they handle that, though, as the original concerns might be overridden because of the current situation but would still be an issue as and when life gets back to normal.

Maybe they’ll grant access to the API but only for the specific purpose of contact tracking in relation to the pandemic. As any such app would by definition become unnecessary once the pandemic has passed, they could then restrict the API again, thereby killing those apps.

[BR14]

you don't expect ivan to take all that in do you?
he's just spreading his russian cheer, as usual.

[AtW]

It should be GPS based - build as part of OS, saving data to remote servers that should crunch it all to identify neaby phones if somebody tests positive - Chinese done great job on such app

[NickFitz]

It should be GPS based - build as part of OS, saving data to remote servers that should crunch it all to identify neaby phones if somebody tests positive - Chinese done great job on such app

That also uses Bluetooth to identify actual devices, I believe. GPS is also used, as is locating by nearby known wifi SSIDs, but neither of those are sufficiently accurate. Add Bluetooth into the mix and you can say, with a high degree of confidence, that these twenty people - really, devices belonging to them - were within a short distance of a specific infected person when they popped into the shop for twenty Rothmans last Thursday.

And yes, it should be at the OS level, which from that article seems to be the way Apple and Google want to go, thereby eliminating the need to grant such extensive permissions to third party apps.

[BR14]

so, i'll go back to my old nokia, when going out then.

sorted.

[ladymuck]

I don't have Bluetooth or that other nefarious beast, NFD, enabled on my phone and I don't intend to enable either of them. So there.

[AtW]

I don't have Bluetooth or that other nefarious beast, NFD, enabled on my phone and I don't intend to enable either of them. So there.

You might have to stay inside then for the duration...

[ladymuck]

You might have to stay inside then for the duration...

Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.