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There are things which just “suck” and have no viable alternative. For instance: the Government may try to implement a question on “religion” in the Census or it may not... Is there any useful alternative? Useful for what?

Edit: and... five years later. “There was a mistake in the random number generator, all keys are discoverable”. Like, you know, the Intel Security Module.

The author isn't even saying there's no viable alternative. They're just leaving it open. That is particularly troublesome since in this case, unlike your hypothetical, there is obvious value in having faster and more accurate contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The author has absolutely no obligation to give an alternative, man. There is also LOSS of value in violations of privacy.

Also: as a mathematician, there is lots of value in a counterexample to part of a proof. Just that, even though the final result is true.

There's no obligation, it just means it's not a good article.

> it just means it's not a good article.

Not necessarily. They included in the article that we could use decentralized contact tracing instead; and, an article arguing against a feature doesn't need an alternative.

If a refrigerator were being released with a microwave, do I really need to provide alternatives to where I could put the microwave instead?

Among other arguments, it argues that contact tracing is a source of mass surveillance. That alone, for the appropriate crowd, is enough reason to not use it. There doesn't need to be an alternative because the alternative is _not having it_.

Just because a bunch of developers ended up wasting their resources on a feature that is a net loss for society doesn't mean that the feature needs to be released.

> They included in the article that we could use decentralized contact tracing instead

GACT is decentralized. The article is arguing against decentralized contact tracing.

> a feature that is a net loss for society

The article doesn't even try to make that argument, which is why it is not very good.

There are likely over 1 million people infected with COVID-19 in the US right now. I doubt any contact tracing is going to be useful at this point, and isolation has slowed the spread but it’s reduced it enough that contact tracing is likely viable.

Your last sentence seems to contradict itself?

Yea, that’s close to gibberish.

“but not reduced it enough that contact tracing is likely viable”

For example, NYC has seemingly slowed the spread enough it’s possible to Test for and track new cases. But if you dig into their numbers 4,264 deaths are linked to COVID but where not tested prior to death. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page. They have little idea who’s currently infected and “ Due to delays in reporting, recent data are incomplete.”

Essentially they need a solid 2 weeks of minimal new cases. At which point they can start meaningful contract tracing, but contract tracing does not mean you can just get back to normal. Just slightly reduce the amount of isolation.

My understanding is that these tools are mostly being developed to allow reopening of things once the first wave dies down, with infrastructure in place to support contact tracing and reduce the impact of any second wave.

Reopen a small percentage of things, yes but not go back to normal. It provides minimal gain which is import only when the case reproduction rate is close to 1.

Remember, virus still doubles every 2-3 days under normal conditions. Without a vaccine or herd immunity, contact tracing alone does very little. It’s enough to reopen dental offices possibly hair salons, not schools.

I think you'll learn something from 3brown1blue's youtube video on simulating different intervention techniques. It's from a few weeks ago, but it very clearly shows how valuable contact tracing is, during any stage of the outbreak.

3brown1blue’s video is a very simplistic introduction to the subject. It’s illustrative not predictive.

Contact tracing is clearly useful, but on it’s one does not change the basic reproduction numbers much. Look at South Korea which still has active infections despite active contact tracing and very successful social distancing.

Contact tracing COVID-19 is suplimental not a solution.

PS: As to my point, if you’re a grocery store employee in NYC you are likely to have been in contact with someone with COVID-19 in the last week. We can’t simply send all of them home, that’s the issue with contact tracing when a meaningful percentage of the population is infected. You need looser restrictions which reduces effectiveness.

I care about America, but I live in NZ where the situation is much better (so far) and effective contract tracing is undoubtedly going to be very important.

One alternative that seems to work decently well is a cooperative society with a piece of paper where you share your phone number when needed. That's what Taiwan is doing and it works pretty well. But it only works because there is a base level of trust that the information is not misused. There is no such trust in the US and other places.

I agree that trust has been eroded over the years. US is also a more individualistic society, which means individuals are less willing to sacrifice self for whole. I don't want to cast too wide a net, but asian countries tend towards society orientation. Heavens know I could not live long in Japan.

I hadn't heard about the paper-based phone number sharing approach in Taiwan - do you have a link where I could find out more about that, out of interest?

Perhaps similar or related, I'd read that Taiwan's using an alert system[1] that uses the absence of cell phone activity as a sign that it may be necessary to check on the owner.

[1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52017993

I don't really have a link. Taiwan uses triangulation to make sure you stay in place once you've been detected as someone who has been in contact.

Some places have digital access but in general the temperature measurement of bigger buildings are automated. But most places I went to had a paper form to fill out your details. I assume those are shared with law enforcement and CDC once one person who attended the building has been traced as a positive case and then all people and their contacts will be notified and tested.

There is no centralized government mandated central database that I know of. But I do know that once a crime happens they're quite good at tracing your public movements.

Yes, but after the pandemic, wouldn't it be nice to be sure something like this is in place before we learn about a new virus? Wouldn't it be great if we kept this thing on forever, so it could be used retroactively after an outbreak has happened to trace it back and become even better at avoiding pandemics?

Oh, and maybe this could also be used to avoid certain crimes such as terrorism?

You know where this leads to.

> Yes, but after the pandemic, wouldn't it be nice to be sure something like this is in place before we learn about a new virus? Wouldn't it be great if we kept this thing on forever, so it could be used retroactively after an outbreak has happened to trace it back and become even better at avoiding pandemics?

> Oh, and maybe this could also be used to avoid certain crimes such as terrorism?

> You know where this leads to.

Exactly, these capabilities won't go away. Today they are used for good but tomorrow? Not to invoke Godwin's Law but these contact tracing capabilities would have been a Nazi's wet dream.

They already are innate, latent capabilities in proprietary, closed smartphones.

Full open-source everything isn’t air-tight, but potentially a lot better than what we’ve got.

You can definitely live with a voice-only phone, though the current models are horrible (I miss the real Nokia phones).

If you want to live luxuriously, also put a netbook, X1 Carbon, MacBook Air, whatever, in your backpack, then you have Internet, too.

This is not an excuse for the outrageous tracking plans of Apple and Google, I just hope more people will do this as a reaction to those plans.

EDIT: I may have misunderstood the "no alternative", I assumed it was about the need to own a "smart" phone.

>You can definitely live with a voice-only phone

This is likely to be untrue in the immediate future. This is probably already true in places like China, where mobile payments are the norm.

As a personal example, and I know this does not yet apply to the US, but where I live it is impossible (or so inconvenient that it might as well be not possible) to do some banking operations without an Android or iOS device, as even accessing my bank's website requires me to have the app installed for token generation. I'm sure if I shopped around I could still find a smaller bank without such a requirement or live with the limitations, maybe finagle a way to use an emulator or something equally inconvenient, but I'm quite certain that this will not last and a smartphone will become essential. A lot of other things are also quite inconvenient without a smartphone around here.

I know the US and Europe have a distinct resistance to the smartphone (or even the computer) becoming required to live as anything but a homeless vagrant because their economies and infrastructure developed before smartphones were even an idea, which gives them the luxury to resist these technologies on moral grounds, or even on the grounds of not wanting to learn the new thing. On the other hand, countries whose economies developed in lockstep with cellular technologies and smartphones (China, India, much of Africa, South-East Asia, much of Latin America, etc.) don't have that particular luxury or simply take a much more pragmatic approach to the whole thing. In these places it is already incredibly inconvenient to get by without a smartphone and will likely become impossible in the near future, if it isn't already.

When smartphones and the internet do become essential to life, I can only hope that the laws of the land have managed to catch up by then. I am not particularly optimistic on this aspect, though, and I suspect it will take some kind of major disaster and/or abuse of human rights (or more likely, a series of them) to happen for another "age of enlightenment"-like period to happen, focused on information technology this time.

EDIT: spelling

> resistance to the smartphone (or even the computer) become required to live as anything but a homeless vagrant

Yeah. Because they can run out of power, they are easily damaged, and, generally, bug and exploit ridden.

A bank card is near indestructible.

Do you know the size of fraud departments at banks and payment providers, and the budgets going into fraud prevention every year? A bank card is as easily destructible as a smartphone is, but is far less secure, as we're sacrificing security for usability.

If we're comparing smartphone vs bank cards, it's only fair to presume that the bank cards are equipped with EMV, because magstripe terminals won't be able to accept smartphone either. In that case, I fail to see any security advantage over smartphones.

Magstripe terminals can accept smartphone generated pins with a software update, you just enter the (OTP) pin manually.

I've seen this used at Wells Fargo ATMs.