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Comment by Tainnor | Hacker News Reader

I think that there is no reason why contract tracing apps can't be designed with privacy in mind (in fact, several privacy experts agree on that) and that there is some danger of governments ignoring that (even though, at least in Europe, they should be bound by the GDPR and sometimes more stringent national laws).

But there are a lot of knee-jerk "but muh liberties" reactions in this thread and I think this is very dangerous, as it fails to see that sometimes individual rights must be weighed against each other.

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The "but muh liberties" reactions are understandable in context increasing broken civic institutions compounded by various cultural factors. There's so much regression in various indicators aggregated over time that reforming governance seems impossible compared to preventing exploitation in the first place. But social upheavals like covid19 is the best opportunity for these reforms outside of war. In the mean time, I have no problem prioritizing contact tracing apps at all cost. But I have the benefit of a slightly more competent government, though I understand the general pessimism for those with understandably less faith.

My personal issue is the companies with ubiquitous presence to implement these changes (Apple & Google) has to negotiate US political environment. One on hand, having a near global solution seems preferable to fractured regional systems specially if we expect to resume global travel in the future. On the other hand, this is more global surveillance information at the hands of US government which... I'm sure they're eager to collect.

I do understand skepticism towards the proposed solutions, but what I don't understand are statements like "my personal liberty is more valuable than the majority's right to live" (which I think is just an absurd stance to take in general), or people who have suggested that quarantine restrictions are fundamentally undermining personal liberty for no reason.

I agree, I think some people in this thread need to slow down and think very carefully about what they are suggesting. Let's remember that America at least was founded not only liberty, but also on life and the pursuit of happiness. I agree that we should always stay vigilant against governments using crises to erode liberty, but at the same time we must also consider the public good in decision making. For example, we have broad freedom of speech protections but we do not allow people to yell "fire" in a crowded theater or make terroristic threats because we have decided that such actions overly encroach on the public's well being.

As this article correctly points out, we should be very concerned about contact tracing, and any contact tracing program needs to have broad privacy and legal protections built into it. What this article does not say is that there should never be any contact tracing for any reason because it has the potential to be abused which automatically outweighs any benefit to public good. Similarly, our stay at home orders should have termination dates based on transparent metrics, and we should be very careful about how we apply martial law. That being said, I find it not only ridiculous but enraging that people would advocate flaunting quarantine out of high level principle. You do not have the right to do harm to others by acting as a viral carrier. You do not have the right to endanger other people with your behavior. You do not have the right to get sick behind principle and then demand scarce hospital resources and provider time. I'm sorry but that is not reasonable, ethical, or in line with the principles our country is based on.

Having lived in dense Asian cities with collectivist culture it seems like a "no shit" position. Then you spend some time in a US suburb or even more rural areas where people "feel" more insulated from broader society and you can see how these thoughts in conjunction with individual exceptionalism take root. Feel being a key qualifier because these people who be just as fucked if the disease cannot be contained in urban areas just like urban areas would be fucked if their rural support system collapses, and for many countries if globalism collapses.

My current position is I can't see covid19 or any similarly infectious disease being contained without mass contact tracing / global medical monitoring technology, it's an emergent reality when globalized society confronts pandemics. The only things preventing this system prior was an absence of technology, so in some sense we are almost fortunate the outbreak is happening with our current capabilities. If covid19 happened instead of SARS 20 years ago, there wouldn't even be the technology to rapidly map the genome, roll out tests, or contact trace the way east Asian countries are doing to mitigate spread. This is the first time in human history where we have the opportunity deal with ongoing serious pandemic and perhaps implement resilient technical systems to prevent for future events without catastrophic social disruption. Covid19 is not going to be the last pandemic we see, billions of people in Asia and Africa are being uplifted through industrialization which means more opportunities for zoonotic diseases in the future.

I think you raise a good point of how culture-dependent reactions to the virus are. Even if we're not as collectivist as much of Asia, Europe seems to be much more relaxed about temporarily giving up some "liberties" than the US.

Although it's noteworthy that data protection is also much stronger in Europe than in the US.

Yeah, I think with respect to privacy, some Europeans have faith that they can claw back some lost protection via democratic process. Other places are justifiably more pessimistic.

I have lived in both the cultures.

I don't believe mass contact tracing is essential to contain this pandemic. It is a trojan.

>> If covid19 happened instead of SARS 20 years ago, there wouldn't even be the technology ....

Again, just because we have the technology, it gets used, irrespective of whether is needed or useful.It is hilarious that we don't have technology/will to provide PPE for healthcare workers, masks for everyone but hey we can easily track everyone in the world. Talk about perverse optimizations.

And what is more, now, people are welcoming it !!

There's a lot of knee-jerk "I trust muh government", which is very naive.

Bound by the GDPR? Really? People here are giving out advice like a smart high school student who thinks he knows everything because he has read about it.

The real world does not work that way.

At no point in my post did I say "I trust my government".

If you have any specific criticism, in particular about why you think the GDPR doesn't matter and why "the real world" works differently, I'd be happy to hear it.

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