Apple and Google are building a Bluetooth-based system into their phones to track people’s interactions with coronavirus-infected people and reduce the spread of the virus.
The companies have stressed that users will be required to opt-in, but some worry that policymakers will force users to adopt the tools so that governments can decide how to enforce social distancing guidelines.
Governments and health agencies have placed a premium on contact tracing as they try to contain the virus, tracking who a coronavirus-infected person has contact with and where the infected person has gone.
Apple and Google are building contact-tracing tools into their operating systems, and will begin next month rolling out technology that will allow their phones and other devices that use public health applications to communicate with each other.
“All of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems,” Apple and Google said in a statement. “Through close cooperation and collaboration with developers, governments and public health providers, we hope to harness the power of technology to help countries around the world slow the spread of COVID-19 and accelerate the return of everyday life.”
The companies Apple and Google say the technology will not share the identities of coronavirus-infected people and that it will not collect user-location data.
Devices using the new technology will exchange anonymous identifier beacons when the devices come into close proximity with each other. Later, when a user becomes infected and it is reported on a public health application, users of the other devices the coronavirus-infected person has interacted with will receive a notification on their phone saying they were exposed to someone with coronavirus.
Apple and Google have stressed that “privacy, transparency and consent are of utmost importance in this effort” and insist the tech will be used only for contact tracing by public health officials.
Technology experts and privacy advocates, however, have many concerns about the new tools.
Ashkan Soltani, former Federal Trade Commission chief technology officer in the Obama administration, said the new venture raises privacy concerns and is likely to produce false positives and false negatives.
“While I suspect these tools will be framed as ’voluntary / opt-in’ — they will eventually become compulsory once policymakers begin to rely on them in order to decide, for example, who can leave the house or who can return to work — setting an incredibly dangerous precedent,” Mr. Soltani tweeted.
“This is what happened in China — where Chinese citizens needed to show their ’red/orange/green’ code before they were permitted to leave the house or to use public [trains], etc.”
Mr. Soltani warned of false positives and false negatives, so a next-door neighbor you have never met, for example, could receive a false alert of coronavirus exposure because of their devices’ close proximity to one another.
“MOST IMPORTANTLY there’s a REAL risk of abuse from these apps — generating false alarms and Denial-of-Service attacks from people falsely flagging that they’re infected with COVID-19 (crying ’wolf’) — thereby potentially affecting the others they’ve digitally been in contact with,” Mr. Soltani tweeted.
Apple and Google have published online the details of their plans, giving outsiders the opportunity to scrutinize them while they develop them.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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