
Google Apple Contact Tracing (GACT): a wolf in sheep’s clothes? - jrepinc
https://blog.xot.nl/2020/04/19/google-apple-contact-tracing-gact-a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothes/
======
roca
The article is entirely premised on Apple and Google not giving users control
over whether tracing is enabled. Indeed, if they don't, that would be bad. If
they do, the concerns in this article do not apply.

> GACT creates a dormant functionality for mass surveillance, that can be
> turned on with the flip of a virtual switch at Apple or Google HQ.

If you don't trust Google or Apple to do what they say they do then you need
to stop using their OS and hardware. It is already the case that Google and
Apple can push (more) surveillance into your device anytime. GACT does not
change that.

> Which makes the whole GACT platform a smokescreen really, as exactly the
> strong oversight would be required if the GACT platform was not there, and
> apps requested special access to Bluetooth to implement their own contact
> tracing technology.

Not at all. Plausible advantages of GACT: a) Google and Apple don't have to
evaluate the properties of each app's Bluetooth protocol; b) standardizing the
protocol prevents Balkanization and makes tracing much more effective; c)
Google and Apple are likely to implement it better.

Another problem with this article is that the criticism is not constructive.
If we believe the conclusions of the article, then what? Is there a better way
to leverage smartphones for contact tracing? Or should we abjure smartphone-
powered contact tracing? Doing what instead? "This sucks" without comparing it
to alternatives is not actionable.

~~~
rollingbarreler
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Defence is done in layers. Imagine a
castle; does it stand on it's own in a plain field? Unlikely. It has walls,
moats, hills, guard towers, bars on windows.

Even if Google or Apple are _capable_ of doing something evil, you can stil
prevent them from excersing that power by not setting an example that it's
okay to do so.

~~~
t-writescode
> Even if Google or Apple are _capable_ of doing something evil

Genuinely, it's not Google nor Apple that I fear doing something evil here.

Google will try to give me more targeted ads, without giving that detailed
data to their app developers, but instead just making their demographics tools
better.

Apple will do what they think will help the circumstance.

I fear the government doing evil with it, especially under the guise of good.

"Hey, we found this terrorist's phone number, turns out he has an Android
device. Give me every person that's been physically near him in the last 24
hours"

"Hey, these 37 people were at a protest, where do they spend their off time?"

~~~
lonelappde
The situation to fear is already possible and is not made worse by GACT.

------
threeseed
Everything in this article is completely illogical and baseless.

We can't trust Apple/Google to manage the anonymous data behind Contract
Tracing but we can for our photos, phone calls, messages, web history, app
data and GPS locations.

And we have to be fearful because this anonymous data is somehow going to be
linked by Apple/Google to real persons and used for mass surveillance. But yet
they could have done this for years without needing GACT as an excuse.

~~~
sildur
This allows to track who was in contact with who. That is something new.

~~~
threeseed
Sorry to burst your bubble but governments have had access to this data for
decades via their data siphoning agreements with telcos.

I used to work at a telco and we absolutely knew your location based off base
station triangulation. And we knew who you called and messaged and who was
nearby to you.

~~~
aembleton
Why isn't this data used then for contact tracing?

~~~
rrdharan
The whole point of GACT is to prevent governments from going that route.

i.e. most folks in favor of GACT adoption see the alternative path, of using
actual location data without opt in and operated by the government, as a
scarier erosion of privacy.

------
krcz
While it is important to keep Apple and Google under scrutiny and demand
transparency, this blogpost is mostly FUD based on silent assumptions
contradicting descriptions of the protocol and implementation.

> ensuring that all users of a modern iPhone or Android smartphone will be
> tracked as soon as they accept the OS update. (Again, to be clear: this
> happens already even if you decide not to install a contact tracing app!) It
> is unclear yet how consent is handled, whether there will be OS settings
> allowing one to switch on or off contact tracing, what the default will be.

I don't think that's correct: you can always disable Bluetooth. Moreover
broadcasting, if I understand the documentation correctly, Google and Apple
will be providing just general framework: no ID broadcasting will happen until
a tracking app is installed. But even if it did, if the tracking keys are not
published, it doesn't affect privacy more that Bluetooth MAC address.

> In other words, a malicious app could act as if the user is infected (in a
> way that is unnoticeable to the user) and extract the daily tracing keys and
> upload them to the server surreptitiously.

That's true for decentralized tracking not using Google's framework as well.

> This means the technology is available all the time, for all kinds of
> applications.

In Android ecosystem Bluetooth is available for all kinds of applications too.
There is a permissions subsystem that can be applied in both cases.

Everything that Google / Apple Contact Tracing allows is already possible in
Android. What it provides is a common standard, implementation, and iOS
background Bluetooth capabilities.

~~~
pfalafel
> you can always disable Bluetooth

"To improve device experience, apps and services can still scan for nearby
devices at any time, even when Bluetooth is off."

~~~
krcz
It is not COVID tracking specific, is it? So no change here either, I guess.
And it seems you can turn it off as well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22856030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22856030)
, first comment.

~~~
pfalafel
Exactly what it says: Disabling Bluetooth does not disable Bluetooth (Low
Energy). Same for G, same for A. And I hate it.

~~~
05
Citation on iOS not disabling Bluetooth (both classic and LE) when turned off
in Settings (not the Control Center)?

------
the_mitsuhiko
I find these articles incredibly frustrating. If you go in with such a bias
against the core concept then you run at risk of throwing out common sense in
the process.

The article can basically be summarized in two points: slippery slope and
distrusting the platform holder. The former is best countered by looking over
what the platform holders do, the latter has little to do with contact
tracing. Apple already broadcasts proximity IDs for "find my". They were in
fact heralded for their privacy first approach of that protocol until a few
months ago.

If you distrust your platform holder — which is fine — then be aware of what
they are doing everywhere. This contact tracing protocol is by far the least
worrisome thing these platforms do. In fact it largely just undoes a recent
security improvement: MAC address rotation on Bluetooth.

I have a bit problem with blog posts like this: they get circulated widely
because they propagate the idea of the big platform holders building a
surveillance system. It particularly problematic because it also plays into
the hands of PEPP-PT and other efforts which actually do want to build a
centralized contact tracing system and they need the platform holders to give
more control over the bluetooth stack for that goal.

Right now if apple and google were to go ahead with this implementation it
would make it significantly harder to build a surveillance system than if
certain other efforts would get their way.

~~~
lr10g
You have a point, but 99.9% of consumers cannot follow your reasoning. What
_they_ will see is this:

"Apple and Google selflessly implement a new magic technology to save our
lives. This involves a tiny little bit of contact analysis. Who would possibly
resist!"

For these 99.9% the association "contact tracing good" has now been
established. Companies will slowly go further and further in the future,
because this event has established a precedence case.

Anchoring bad things to positive events and outcomes works. Advertising works,
not for HN readers but for the general population.

~~~
therealdrag0
Eh, seems like the opposite. So many people are both skeptical of surveillance
and ignorant of technical implementation that no matter how secure/anonymous
it is they will FUD about it and think the advertising is lies. And all the
other people who don’t care about existing tracking will continue to not care.

------
jka
This is clearly a highly-technical project by teams at both Google and Apple,
and presumably those teams have social overlap with the userbase here on
Hacker News.

The risks raised by this article appear credible and worthy of consideration.

It'll be interesting to see whether Google and Apple do openly respond to any
of the specific concerns raised by the privacy and security community - for
exmaple, whether the functionality will be time-limited to the duration of
COVID-19.

Google and Apple would gain huge potential leverage over nations worldwide if
they retain the sole ability to offer and withdraw the functionality and to
vet the applications that are allowed to use it.

~~~
threeseed
> Google and Apple would gain huge potential leverage over nations worldwide

You do understand that Apple/Google are not in charge of the world. They
operate within each country based on the laws that each government puts in
place. It would be trivial for any country to force this functionality to be
on/off and dictate which apps it can be used with.

~~~
jka
For nations with the technical & legal staff and time required to review,
address and negotiate updated legal terms with Google and Apple, that may be
true.

Since you sound familiar with the situation, can you provide a link/reference
to evidence of a country trivially changing the behaviour of an operating-
system level feature like GACT after it has been deployed?

~~~
chefkoch
There was a special Windows version for the EU.

~~~
jka
Thank you. Are you referring to the "Microsoft Corp. v Commission of the
European Communities" case[1]?

(lodged in 2004, resolved in 2007 - and led to the release of a version of
Windows without Windows Media Player installed-by-default)

[1] - [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:62...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:62004TJ0201)

------
jmull
I think this is the guy spreading FUD about this last week. He’s back
spreading the FUD again this week.

In his analysis he keeps ignoring that the flow of data is user-controlled.

You need to opt-in to start this this, not just take an OS update.

You also need to install an app and opt-in to allow it to use the data.

Looking at the docs, the user also needs to approve at the point where an app
receives the day and duration of contacts with an infected person. The only
thing an app that you’ve already downloaded and opted-in to can do without
further permission if report some contact with an infected person: not who or
even which daily tracking ids, not when within the last 14 days. That won’t
make a tool of mass surveillance.

In places he acknowledges some of this, but his analysis proceeds as if the
user-controlled nature of this doesn’t exist.

This is deeply despicable.

To the extent this guy and people like him can sow distrust of this platform,
the weaker privacy-preserving covid19 contact tracing will be.

That leads to _more death and deeper economic ruin_.

There are various other problems with the analysis here: For example (just a
selection) (1) this platform doesn’t require any more trust from Google and
Apple than before. They’ve always been capable of turning your phone into a
tool of mass surveillance, one much more effective than what this platform
allows. (2) This system _cant’t_ be turned into a tool of mass surveillance
with the flip of a virtual switch at Apple or Google HQ. The software to
expose the data won’t exist and so would have to be developed, tested and
released. This guy is using a Hollywood movie level understanding of of
software systems here.

By the way, this guy is a professor with a specialty in privacy, so we know he
knows better.

That means all of this is malicious. I don’t know what he has to gain from
pushing this FUD, but I do know he doesn’t mind getting a bunch of people
killed or putting them through economic hardship.

He should be using his expertise to do an honest and competent analysis of
this system so that it could be improved.

~~~
empiricus
My understanding from the article: if the tracing functionality is in the OS,
it can be enabled in the future without user consent. The fact that currently
we need to opt-in with an app does not really matter; in the future the
government can decide to use it directly for whatever purposes.

~~~
jmull
As the system is described there’s no way to flip a switch.

Apple/Google could always push a software update that does all kinds of
terrible things, _but that has always been true and remains true_ with or
without a contact tracing system. It’s a concerning possibility but has
nothing at all to do with this system.

------
linsomniac
My high-level understanding of how it works is: Every 20m I generate a key,
broadcast it and listen for and record others keys I hear around me.
Periodically, I ask a server for a list of "infected" keys and compare those
keys with what I've seen. If I get infected, I submit my key to the server.

The "who's seen who" sounded like it was entirely done locally to your
devices.

Unless something nefarious is done under the covers, no central server gains
access to the information correlation information.

What am I missing here? It seems like this system preserves privacy.

I exclude nefarious action above because if we believe Google or Apple are
acting nefarious (which I understand many do), then they already be doing so
at so many levels in our hardware and software that this is just a drop in the
bucket.

------
aww_dang
Do you really need a mobile phone? I spend enough time with the Internet in
the home office. When I go out, I go to a mountain, forest or similar natural
scene. A phone + Internet is just bringing what I seek to escape from with me.

Just ditch the phone. Problem solved. Simple solutions are usually the best.

------
riffraff
The article states

> GACT works much more reliably and extensively than any other system based on
> either GPS or mobile phone location data (based on cell towers) would be
> able to (under normal conditions). I want to stress this point because some
> people have responded to this threat saying that this is something companies
> like Google (using their GPS and WiFi names based location history tool) can
> already do for years. This is not the case. This type of contact tracing
> really brings it to another level.

I don't see an explanation of why this would be so.

Also, I see here as elsewhere a "what if one installs a malicious app that
uses this?", but that argument applies even without the contact tracing
framework.

Still, there are some valid points which I hope can be considered by the spec
authors.

~~~
ohnope
I'd guess it's because GPS / cell phone tracking data rely on line of sight to
towers / satellites, but GACT works on human-to-human proximity, and therefore
data can survive offline locally until some point in the future when you get
connection back. Also it seems the distance accuracy between human to human
would be more accurate (via BT signal strength) than distance accuracy in a
GPS / cell phone tower situation.

~~~
Mindwipe
BT interference is much more common, and BT identifiers are much easier to
reset.

Cell phone tracking data does not rely on line of sight to towers, and for
most people there is no offline for this to be relevant.

------
LatteLazy
We are already under mass surveillance.

The movements of your mobile phone (and everything you look at on it and what
you type and who you communicate with and what you say and literally
everything else you can think of) is available at the touch of a button to the
government.

It amazes me that people know this, but simultaneously don't know it?!

The horse has bolted. It is gone. This urge to close doors to empty stables is
really baffling to me. Really confusing. Why are people like this?

~~~
temporaryvector
The complaint isn't about the capability for mass surveillance, but the
normalization of it, in the public mind.

The capability has existed for a pretty long time, mostly out of the public
eye, with occasional bursts of outrage when something caused it to become
public, quickly forgotten afterwards.

The capability is there, that genie is out of the bottle and nobody is going
to put it back in. This isn't really about the technology, it's about the
legal frameworks and social attitudes surrounding this capability that are
worth talking about. Putting your hands up in defeat is not useful, and at
this point probably neither is trying to prevent the technology from
spreading. I am unsure what the solution is but the conversation needs to
happen, and in all likelihood the end result of that conversation will be that
corporations can't be trusted, just like they couldn't be trusted with food
safety, for example, thus the FDA was created. What actions will be taken
after that, I cannot predict.

~~~
LatteLazy
Sorry, I can see where you're coming from, I just think you're seeing a
difference that isn't there.

Specifically, these programs are totally normalised. We've had them for
decades. They're supported by both parties in the the whole English speaking
world. They've grown and expanded since they were revealed. At this point,
total surveillance is normal.

If anything, making an app for coronavirus is a good thing. It's easier to
ignore this if it's done server side than if your carrier suddenly compels you
to install some shitty slow battery draining app. I don't know if that
qualifies as normalising it, but if it does and get people up in arms (or
encourages even 1% of them to move to tor or signal or something) it's a good
thing...

------
zepto
Is there a reason why this framework can’t be open sourced by Google and
Apple?

I’m not suggesting that it be developed by the community, but it seems like
visibility into the source could give some assurance of what it is doing and
potential weakpoints.

------
tomger
I realize governments, Apple, google already have access to my personal
information and location. But I get the sense the public gets uncomfortable
whenever we feel Governments are openly using our personal data on a large
scale. Uncomfortable is the key for me.

What scares me specifically about person proximity tracking is that in the
current covid world it seems realistic that some governments will force people
to enable it with seeming support from the public. Therefor eroding that
uncomfortableness.

------
KKKKkkkk1
I feel that Apple and Google are a bit coy when they claim their solution is
opt-in only. Given that one super-spreader can infect a whole city, you need
very comprehensive coverage to keep infections under control. It's as if these
companies are winking at governments and saying: Hey, we've done our part, now
it's on you to enact CCP-style policies to make sure that everyone has to opt-
in before you're allowed to leave your hose.

------
yalogin
This isn’t how you do privacy analysis. The author assumed stuff about stuff
he doesn’t know and extrapolated on that. I was expecting some protocol
analysis. Not sure who this is and if the individual usually does
cryptanalysis or not. So we don’t know what their thoughts on the actual
protocol are. Unfortunately I am worried this will be listed as a negative on
the protocol by aggregators who are not technical.

------
diebeforei485
I hope they consider adversarial use cases.

Authoritarian countries may give fake test results to people they don't like
in order to find their whereabouts for the past two weeks, for example.

In the end, people should be in control and it should be obviously simple turn
it off systemwide (not buried in Settings > Privacy > Location > System
Services or whatever).

~~~
lonelappde
Why would someone evil do something in a comically complicated way instead of
a simpler easier way.

------
hedora
Simple question: Why doesn’t the following work?

Say I work for a repressive regime. To do business in our economy (tag into
subways, etc), you need to install an app with GACT enabled.

Now, whenever we arrest a political opponent, we get their GACT device key,
and flag all of their associates as political dissidents, and arrest them too.

This seems like an invaluable tool for oppression.

~~~
bryan_w
That app would have to be approved by Apple, which they wouldn't do

------
topkai22
The major question I have about smartphone based contact tracing is if it is
effective, and if so how much more effective is it then existing techniques.

Bluetooth based contact tracing could be a valuable tool in public health, but
as many have opined it is also a significant sacrifice of privacy.

Is there any data on the effectiveness of this sort of technology yet?

~~~
edmundsauto
3brown1blue had a youtube video a few weeks ago, running simulations. The
effect of contact tracing and testing is significant. Granted, it's just a
simulation, but the efficacy of contact tracing + testing is quite powerful.

~~~
topkai22
Absolutely, the efficacy of contact tracing has been known for a long time.

That being said, we’ve also been doing interview based contact tracing for a
long time. The current IT systems for doing contact tracing leave a lot to be
desired (I did a trade study a couple months ago), but public health agencies
have procedures for doing contact tracing without invading privacy nearly as
much as the proposed platform.

Preemptively using smartphone interactions to capture information world
definitely be cheaper than the current manual processes but I want to know how
much it improves efficacy before nationwide/global deployment of such an
invasive technology.

Until then, hire contact tracer’s. There are a lot of unemployed people.

~~~
edmundsauto
Pardon my ignorance, but how does a human do contact tracing? Start calling
people to find out if they shopped somewhere recently with a known exposure?

~~~
topkai22
You interview the identified case to determine who they’ve been in close
contact with for the last several days, get their contact info, and then test
them. Repeat for any new positive contacts.

If they were in any public areas you can pull purchase records for any one who
also was in the area at the same time.

~~~
edmundsauto
I've been wondering this -- what is my likelihood of infection based on
vector? If I go shopping and there are 5% people actively infected, how does
that compare to living with someone?

I've been operating under the assumption that proximity without PPE but within
a few hours of existing in the same space is a significant vector. If true, it
seems like it'll be very difficult to find people who shopped at the same
store within the same day.

------
quezzle
Do people really think the evil sorcerers at the twin towers of google and
Apple rub their hands and laugh maniacally at the chance to build the ultimate
evil privacy violation tool made only ever more fabulously evil because it is
cloaked in goodness and brought as a gift to do good?

These are not the nine rings for mortal kings.

Do these people think that Larry and Sergei call a meeting of their most evil
henchmen/project managers and say “gentlemen we have been given an outstanding
chance to build something magnificently privacy violating! The coronavirus has
driven people into our hands! We have waited so long for the chance to build
such a system and because people think it’s for good, we’ll never be
suspected! Go my minions, fly and build the dark software that will create us
a secret and hidden trove of privacy data the likes of no other! Ha ha ha !”

The privacy nuts really think this way.

~~~
donohoe
No. I think you're jumping through a number of hoops to paint such a picture
and discredit the post.

The larger point for me is: this is great and helpful but in doing this we
undermine privacy in other less obvious ways.

These two quotes sum it all up for me:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

~~~
iso1210
> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
> Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

One of the most misunderstood quotes on the internet

------
rising-sky
> GACT works much more reliably and extensively than any other system based on
> either GPS or mobile phone location data (based on cell towers) would be
> able to (under normal conditions). I want to stress this point because some
> people have responded to this threat saying that this is something companies
> like Google (using their GPS and WiFi names based location history tool) can
> already do for years. This is not the case. This type of contact tracing
> really brings it to another level

I'm curious about this, the author says they would like to "stress this
point", but then provides no analysis or evidence to impress this... anyone
have any buttressing points?

------
DigitalSparky
Contact Tracing is an awesome way to use the technology in theory, however,
while a bit conspiracy theory-ish, it can also be used as trojan policy to
allow unfettered warrantless access to location data, mass surveillance, and
anything else they'd like that could be exfiltrated from user devices.

Anything that has the ability to be exploited will be exploited for purposes.

We have a generally healthy level of distrust for our governments as well as
big business, and given the consistent evidence, I feel that's generally
warranted. (Government is supposed to serve the people, not the other way
around).

I would never opt-in for this nor would I trust it.

~~~
lallysingh
I don't understand why they'd need to even tell us about it. Call it a
security update and install on every phone.

~~~
kohtatsu
Pessimism is an indulgence.

Don't go gentle into that good night.

------
linsomniac
Personal opinion: I'm glad Google and Apple are working on this. Because a
very likely possibility if they don't, is that the governments demand further
access to devices, backdoors to software, and enhanced power related to data
collection and use.

Rationally, this would boil down to whether you trust your government or the
tech companies more with this data, and opinions will vary.

My, admittedly high level, review of this proposal is that it seems to have a
good privacy design. As I understand it, the contact information never leaves
your device.

------
kohtatsu
I don't think it's absurd to forego all this fancy crap that triggers through
walls, and instead have a cute, local-to-device, privacy respecting app for
logging contacts and locations.

Brought your mom some bread today? Log it in the app.

Went to a grocery store after? Log it in the app.

Every Sunday or something maybe check in with some of the people you got
within physical proximity of, and try to investigate a bit if there were any
known cases at your grocery store or such.

If you were potentially in contact with Covid, maybe update the people you saw
after it, or maybe just self isolate, or maybe both.

Definitely do get in contact if you have symptoms, and ideally you could even
alert the grocery store and they could post a notice somewhere people could
easily find (ideally online) with when you visited and perhaps the likelihood
of you having had it at that point.

Sanitize your groceries too~ People pick things up and put them back, I
imagine there are hundreds of cans and junk food wrappers sitting in stores
across america right now with Covid on them.

I really believe this is all doable with the stock iOS Reminders app and some
discipline. But a standalone app would be nice; not-plaintext-in-the-cloud is
kind of important at scale. Non-iCloud reminder lists were possible at one
point.

(Tangent but Reminders a misnomer imo, I vote renaming it to String Nest)

------
john_minsk
Why they wouldn't say that this will be removed after pandemic is over is
beyond my understanding.

------
cheaprentalyeti
A couple points that have probably already been made by someone else:

* I suspect Google and Apple probably did a lot of contact tracing/traffic analysis type stuff that they don't want public...

and

* Contact tracing in the US might have been useful on January 15th but right now it's probably pointless.

------
technimad
Who do you trust more to build a complex decentralized anonymous tracing
system? Which will be subject to the toughest privacy and security audit ever
seen. A random tracing app developer, or an alliance of the biggest competing
players in this field?

------
egwor
We may well really need this kind of tracing, and frankly it would be useful
if we had had it since it would have and will save lives.

Do I think it is sensible to raise concerns? Yes Am I disappointed that there
aren't specific suggestions to address issues? Yes

It is really easy to criticise and a lot more difficult to come up with
solutions. As an expert in privacy, I'd have liked to see specific actionable
items. e.g. 'Google/Apple must do X to ensure Y' or something saying 'Yes,
this is really difficult and I don't know the answer'. This opens the floor
for collaboration and for suggestions which feels a lot more constructive.

What's key is that this is done right. If it isn't done right, there's a risk
that no one will install it and we don't get the protection.

~~~
blumomo
Get the protection from what?

------
Mindwipe
This is a very, very poor article with no real grasp of comparable threat
vectors.

It seems to feel having two centralised vendors for this is worse than just
having arbitrary third parties, without explaining how this would be
facilitated without any controls over this on an OS level, so it would then
just be entirely dependent on all of your third party applications. That's a
much bigger threat model than the OS vendor, requiring you to trust dozens of
different vendors with different motivations to behave.

The fact is really simple, if you don't trust your OS vendor that the APIs are
as described then you're screwed and everything else is irrelevant. It is very
clear the general public do not give a stuff.

------
waylandsmithers
Before we do all this, couldn't Facebook just turn over the data that its
users have already consented to sharing? I feel like that would get us a
significant part of the way there.

------
kylehotchkiss
Silent pocket sales will definitely see an increase from this.

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
Thanks for the reference, I didn’t know about that [1]. Wouldn’t you achieve
the same result by turning on airplane mode? I guess it should be
straightforward to check whether there are any signals when it is activated.

Once you need to be online you must disable airplane mode, true, but you also
must take your phone out of the silent pocket, no? At that point you “lost”.

[1] [https://silent-pocket.com/](https://silent-pocket.com/)

~~~
threeseed
You "lost" the second your phone obtains a mobile phone signal.

At that point the telco can roughly triangulate your position using the base
stations that you're connected to. And determine who is nearby to you.

And better not tell the author of this article but this data has been made
available to authorities for decades.

~~~
kylehotchkiss
My worry is more that there will be an exploit for Android that will collect
all those Bluetooth IDs and geolocations and upload them somewhere that
somebody could use nefariously.

Not saying that telcos have shown any moral high ground with location data,
even Google has this level of location tracking enabled for a considerable
amount of people. I'm most worried about an Elasticsearch instance cropping up
where somebody's bluetooth ID can be used to see how they get to work, etc.
Faraday cage bag for phone seems like a reasonable solution.

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mtreis86
I am well convinced this is just a cover for them to release the information
they already are collecting without admitting they track everyone everywhere.

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IAmEveryone
Google and Apple have come up with a somewhat ingenious scheme to mitigate
this crisis while preserving privacy to the greatest possible extend.

Self-appointed privacy experts aren’t going to do their cause any favors by
reflexively finding/imagining fault with it. This article comes surprisingly
close to literally “crying wolf”.

~~~
IAmEveryone
I do, however, fault Google & Apple for using the acronym "GACT" here. This is
an RNA virus, so they should be able to come up with something that
baxkcronyms to "GACU".

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zxienin
The very OS level baking in of GACT tells that intent is not to make this opt-
in, in principle.

Even if it is rolled out today as opt-in, the option stays open for a
government to centrally enforce mandatory activation of tracking via
Apple/Google

~~~
iso1210
5 years ago you could turn off bluetooth and wifi in ios and it would stay
off.

Now it turns itself back on every day.

It will roll out as opt in, then as opt-in but enabled-by-default, then the
turn off will only be temporary

rfid pocket seems to be the only solution.

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pfalafel
A very well written article this is.

