Comment by DennisP | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DennisP | Hacker News Reader

In the U.S., the Supreme Court decided[1] in 2018 that the government couldn't access cell location data without a warrant. However, they made an exception for public safety:

> Such exigencies include the need to pursue a fleeing suspect, protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm or prevent the imminent destruction of evidence.

Fighting a pandemic arguably falls into this category, since an awful lot of people are threatened with imminent harm. So we already have a constitutional standard for rolling back pandemic-related surveillance measures.

Also, something this article overlooks about the Apple/Google system is that it does a pretty good job of protecting user privacy. Contacts are discovered by direct bluetooth contact, and central servers don't get any information from people except that they tested positive.[2][3]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court...

[2] https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/

[3] https://github.com/DP-3T/documents

Privacy discussions often gloss over or outright ignore the many factors that affect perspectives on privacy. Quite often this will make a stance that is perfectly reasonable to one person look like raving lunatic to another person.

Trust is one factor. Even if an individual agreed that the approach being suggested by Apple and Google is a good one, they are unlikely support it if they do not trust those businesses. Even if that individual trusts the motivations of a party, it does not imply that they trust their competence.

Social change is another factor. Whether we acknowledge it or not, there has been an enormous change in attitudes towards privacy over the past quarter century. If you took anyone from 1995 and showed them the technology of today, they would likely be amazed by our access to information and horrified by other people's access to our own information. Keep in mind that was an era when the Internet was just starting to reach into homes and the typical phone call was made from a landline. On top of that, most devices were siloed by necessity so that phone call was between you, the recipient, and the phone company. You did not have to worry about a social media company trying to mine your contact data with an app installed on your phone (because phones did not support apps and barely supported storing phone numbers). Even though we have had decades to adapt to those changes, some people are more likely to embrace their benefits while others have held on to their old values.

Regarding privacy, is there something in particular blocking then from receiving identifying information from people? Because it seems like this wouldn’t be difficult to add in at such a time as the climate is right to do so, and to be frank I’m not sure that they deserve the benefit of the doubt at this point.

Since they control the OS, I guess there's nothing in particular blocking them from uploading your location and identifying information at all times regardless. But this specific proposed system just uploads a set of random numbers when someone tests positive.

Assuming we never find a viable vaccine, then this would also arguably allow them to continue the tracking for containment/mitigation.

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