{"id":11522,"date":"2020-04-12T11:11:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-12T15:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/?p=11522"},"modified":"2020-05-25T11:37:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T15:37:33","slug":"apple-and-google-are-building-a-coronavirus-tracking-system-into-ios-and-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/apple-and-google-are-building-a-coronavirus-tracking-system-into-ios-and-android\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple and Google are building a coronavirus tracking system into iOS and Android"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Friday, Apple and Google announced a system<\/a> for tracking the spread of the new coronavirus, allowing users to share data through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions and approved apps from health organizations.<\/p>\n

The new system<\/a>, which is laid out in a series of documents and white<\/a> papers<\/a>, would use short-range Bluetooth communications to establish a voluntary contact-tracing network, keeping extensive data on phones that have been in close proximity with each other. Official apps from public health authorities will get access to this data, and users who download them can report if they\u2019ve been diagnosed with COVID-19. The system will also alert people who download them to whether they were in close contact with an infected person.<\/p>\n

Apple and Google will introduce a pair of iOS and Android APIs in mid-May and make sure these health authorities\u2019 apps can implement them. During this phase, users will still have to download an app to participate in contact-tracing, which could limit adoption. But in the months after the API is complete, the companies will work on building tracing functionality into the underlying operating system, as an option immediately available to everyone with an iOS or Android phone.<\/p>\n

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Apple\/Google<\/cite><\/p>\n

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Contact tracing \u2014 which involves figuring out who an infected person has been in contact with and trying to prevent them from infecting others \u2014 is one of the most promising solutions for containing COVID-19, but using digital surveillance technology to do it raises massive privacy concerns and questions about effectiveness<\/a>. Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about tracking users<\/a> with phone data, arguing that any system would need to be limited in scope and avoid compromising user privacy.<\/p>\n

Unlike some other methods \u2014 like, say, using GPS data \u2014 this Bluetooth plan wouldn\u2019t track people\u2019s physical location. It would basically pick up the signals of nearby phones at 5-minute intervals and store the connections between them in a database. If one person tests positive for the novel coronavirus, they could tell the app they\u2019ve been infected, and it could notify other people whose phones passed within close range in the preceding days.<\/p>\n

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To help public health officials slow the spread of #COVID19<\/a>, Google & @Apple<\/a> are working on a contact tracing approach designed with strong controls and protections for user privacy. @tim_cook<\/a> and I are committed to working together on these efforts.https:\/\/t.co\/T0j88YBcFu<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) April 10, 2020<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The system also takes a number of steps to prevent people from being identified, even after they\u2019ve shared their data. While the app regularly sends information out over Bluetooth, it broadcasts an anonymous key rather than a static identity, and those keys cycle every 15 minutes to preserve privacy. Even once a person shares that they\u2019ve been infected, the app will only share keys from the specific period in which they were contagious. <\/p>\n

Crucially, there is no centrally accessible master list of which phones have matched, contagious or otherwise. That\u2019s because the phones themselves are performing the cryptographic calculations required to protect privacy. The central servers only maintain the database of shared keys, rather than the interactions between those keys.<\/p>\n

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Contact tracing can help slow the spread of COVID-19 and can be done without compromising user privacy. We\u2019re working with @sundarpichai<\/a> & @Google<\/a> to help health officials harness Bluetooth technology in a way that also respects transparency & consent. https:\/\/t.co\/94XlbmaGZV<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 10, 2020<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The method still has potential weaknesses. In crowded areas, it could flag people in adjacent rooms who aren\u2019t actually sharing space with the user, making people worry unnecessarily. It may also not capture the nuance of how long someone was exposed \u2014 working next to an infected person all day, for example, will expose you to a much greater viral load than walking by them on the street. And it depends on people having apps in the short term and up-to-date smartphones in the long term, which could mean it\u2019s less effective in areas with lower connectivity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a relatively new program, and Apple and Google are still talking to public health authorities and other stakeholders about how to run it. This system probably can\u2019t replace old-fashioned methods of contact tracing \u2014 which involve interviewing infected people about where they\u2019ve been and who they\u2019ve spent time with \u2014 but it could offer a high-tech supplement using a device that billions of people already own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, Apple and Google announced a system for tracking the spread of the new coronavirus, allowing users to share data through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions and approved apps from health organizations. The new system, which is laid out in a series of documents and white papers, would use short-range Bluetooth communications to establish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16784,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11522\/revisions\/16784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}