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Comment by chevman | Hacker News Reader

Why is Google (and for that matter Apple) not helping to track the prior movement of every coronavirus patient where possible to identify additional potentially exposed individuals?

Seems fairly straightforward given their massive surveillance infrastructure.

Anyone at Apple or Google actually going to pitch in here and offer meaningful help?

So far, crickets.

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Because that would be an incredible violation of privacy and is probably illegal?

I’m not even sure China does that.

I found this site about Singapore yesterday. This kind of detail would never fly in the US. But they do seem to have used it effectively to track the spread of the disease:

https://co.vid19.sg/cases

Holy crap! That's an impressive set of data.

The first thing that came to my mind is HIPAA (I know it's US only). There are more than enough details for each patient to figure out who they are. They list employer, when they traveled, family members, etc.

That level of detail is definitely enough to unmask an individual but if you wanted to protect the infected person's privacy (while massively violating others' in order to join the data sets), it seems like it would be possible to notify an individual that they were exposed, and not leak the infected person's personal details.

Both Singapore and South Korea publicly report such data. Names are anonymized, but it isn't that hard to dox them.

I personally think it is bad that HIPAA doesn't have epidemic exemptions. Over you have widespread testing, having this info public allows:

* Exposed individuals to submit to testing, learning more about who may be exposed = more data and find more exposure

* Learn valuable patterns about disease transfer. E.g. Both Singapore and South Korea clusters suggest children aren't playing a significant role in transfer, but aren't enough data to know for sure. With more data, perhaps we would know they aren't and could avoid enormously expensive school closings.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the end games of lockdown in Western societies are with a disease that can spread asymptomatically. You need these kind of X area was infected at y time announcements to get high enough testing coverage of potentialy infected people.

Oh they’re doing that. You can use AliPay, an omnipresent payments app to get a QR code based on your movements over the past days as tracked by your mobile. If it’s green you’re safe, yellow or red I think you need to be quarantined or at least monitored.

Of fucking course, China does that. Watch the videos on how they are dealing with it. There are several on YouTube. When you get in and out of a subway or a building or whatever you have to scan a QR code with WeChat. Otherwise, you're not allowed to proceed.

They also take your temperature in all these places and if your temp is higher than normal they send you to a fever clinic, where they determine if you have the virus. If you do, you're isolated and your movement data gets flagged to track other potentially infected individuals.

Can you link me one?

Location/association tracking and risk profiling is being done in China with Alipay Health Code[0].

Flash green at the checkpoint and you're allowed through. If your app shows yellow or red -> checks and quarantine.

0: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/07/how-gl...

Korea has a map of all of your travels for the public to see.

Could you expand on that?

For those tested positive they trace/record your travels and put it online so everyone can see if they may have been in the area.

Apparently Israel, Iran, and China are all using people’ cell phones to track infected people.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman...

Because that would shine a light on just how creepy this all is. We know they do it but the normal person might be a bit concerned if Google and Apple just announced "We track you everywhere and who you interact with."

My sister finally came around to thinking Facebook was going to far so she switched to Instagram. We had a uncomfortable conversation last month when I broke the news to her.

It's not creepy as long as it's opt in.

South Korea has an app, it could be done by anybody actually, but a known company would have more resources and branding power.

The reality is that after Eric Schmidt went away, Google changed: it's trying to make money by focusing only on its products instead of focusing on its image by doing good to people (while building its products).

Also Trump doesn't have the same relation with these companies as Obama had.

> We had a uncomfortable conversation last month when I broke the news to her.

That both are owned by the same company?

Replying to myself here - evidently Israel is doing kind of what I was thinking about now:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/middleeast/israel-c...

> Seems fairly straightforward given their massive surveillance infrastructure.

Because I doubt Google has the capability to do this, accurately, without false positives, without being a gross violation of privacy and without joining your location data to medical data, something which I'm fairly sure is illegal.

Usual disclaimer applies, Google employee but not in Geo.

Why are people asking this of Google and Apple and not of, you know, the major telcos who do have your location history (which you cannot opt out of) and are perfectly willing to sell it?

You get national cell phone providers to do that, not tech companies.

Tracking Phones, Google is a Dragnet for the Police: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-loc...

Mirror: http://archive.md/UV9px

Think again. Do we really want this to happen?

I don't think the location history is very accurate. Either the polling interval is too low, or they use less power consuming location services, but Google fudges my history a good amount of time.

If you have google location history turned on you can see it in maps. Its pretty accurate. It couldn’t tell you for sure you were in with 5 feet of a known case, but it certainly would give a useful signal.

This would need to be opt-in, of course.

It would probably be bad PR for them to reveal the extent of their surveillance.

You can see a map of your location history at any time. It's heavily promoted in Maps.

Operative word is “you” there- I cannot look at your location, and the government can’t without a warrant either, what the OP is suggesting is way more invasive.

Because the public, and HN, has convinced itself that big tech has tools and capabilities it actually doesn't. I wish it did! It doesn't.

EDIT: Before you downvote, for a simple example that fits within existing ideological battlelines, how would Apple do this?

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