Apple And Google Build Smartphone Tool To Track COVID-19

Can tech help us get back to normal life? Apple and Google think so! The tech giants are setting aside their rivalry and working together on a contact tracing app (ps you're going to hear this term a lot more. SO back to contact tracing, that’s what public health officials use to track patients with Covid 19 and who have interacted with others, to make sure those people get tested or go into quarantine). Public health workers ask patients a series of questions about where they have gone and who they have met. Then, they have to find those people. It's a very time-consuming process that Apple and Google are trying to sidestep.

So how does it work? 

The technology would rely on the Bluetooth signals that smartphones can both send out and receive. If a person tests positive for COVID-19, they could notify public health authorities through an app. Those public health apps would then alert anyone whose smartphones had come near the infected person's phone in the prior 14 days.

Let me break it down, imagine two people, Jessica and Michael, are standing in line for groceries. Their phones give off Bluetooth signals. The phones also record the signals they receive.

If Michael comes down with COVID-19, he can mark himself as infected in an app from his public health department. The system would then use the record of those anonymous Bluetooth signals to warn anyone whose phone has come near his in the last two weeks — including Jessica. She would then know to get tested for the virus. The software will not collect data on users' physical locations or their personally identifiable information. People who test positive would remain anonymous, both to the people who came in contact with them and to Apple and Google.

Here’s the problem

Privacy groups and security experts are concerned that privacy would take a backseat over people’s individual rights in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. This is pretty much surveillance. Yes, it’s voluntary / opt-in -- but how do we know if they will eventually become mandatory 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.

Apple and Google said they will roll out software updates in mid-May to begin support for contact tracing. 

Apple and Google admitted that no system is completely secure — it’s a widely known concept in cybersecurity that nothing is “unhackable.” Servers can get breached and data can get lost.