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Comment by messo | Hacker News Reader

The good news is that we do not have to sacrifice our (digital) human rights to fight the virus. I was recently made aware of a really simple but effective way of tracking infections without storing data centrally or using positional information (GPS): https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/

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That's correct. DP3T documents and code here: https://github.com/DP-3T/

Also very interessting to read through the issues of the project

It’s really interesting tech, and a great group of people behind it. But the government doesn’t care for this nuance of what is privacy preserving tech and what is not. For now, maybe at the beginning, privacy will be emphasized. But the important part is conditioning citizens to be okay with the underlying idea of technology assisted self-surveillance, and compliance with notifications on their phone telling them to stay inside. Eventually people will forget about the underlying details and privacy will be deemphasized.

“You were okay with TrackingApp 1.0, why wouldn’t you be okay with TrackingApp 2.0?”

If we give an inch now, will the government take a mile later?

Btw, it’s worth noting that last night in his press conference, Trump was asked about contact tracing apps. He emphasized that people are worried about constitutional implications. Personally, that’s refreshing for me, and seems to distinguish him from the Bush/Cheney era pushing of the Patriot Act, or Obama’s use of dragnet surveillance and secret FISA courts.

If we give an inch now, the government will absolutely take a mile later.

From the perspective of the centralized government, it's a race to the bottom with privacy rights and you know what famous racer D. Toretto said about races...

"It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning's winning."

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