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Comment by aguyfromnb | Hacker News Reader

>The governments of the west need to be capable, but still protect the privacy of their people - that isn't an easy problem

You're right, it's a hard problem. And until these companies or institutions can prove that they are doing this, why should we trust them?

>who haven’t even tried to read about the protocol they’re working on.

The companies will collect and store the tracking data, and the government will, one way or another, have access to it. What is so difficult to understand about that?

"It will only be used for good" is laughably naive, as history had demonstrated repeatedly.

>If you care about these issues then you're the type of person that should be involved in solving it

Protesting and making your opinions known is way to help solve the problem.

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> The companies will collect and store the tracking data, and the government will, one way or another, have access to it. What is so difficult to understand about that?

It's difficult to understand because it's false (and this statement shows you haven't tried to understand the solution they are proposing): The data doesn't leave the phone without the user's consent, the consent is only asked for if the user contracts the disease, and the data uploaded when consent is given is only useful to those who have been in the vicinity of that user: the companies developing the system and the government do not get a list of users and their contacts (they get no data at all from anyone who does not consent, and they still don't get contact data from those who do).

The only issue of trust is whether the implementation on the phones matches their statements: but this is already a general problem with phones in general: if you are trusting them to run the OS you are already trusting they will not exfiltrate this and more data. I see no actual expansion in their powers through adopting this approach, and I see them making every effort to protect privacy while achieving the requirements, which is in stark constract to government approaches.

Thank you - the comment you replied to is basically a case in point of what I’m talking about.

> Protesting and making your opinions known is way to help solve the problem.

Not when the protesting and opinions are based on a false understanding that comes from motivated reasoning, knee-jerk negative responses, and not trying to understand the issue deeply.

Then it’s just noise that confuses the issue and makes things worse.

Most of the time it’s not helping to solve the real problem anyway. It just makes people feel good about themselves without actually engaging in the work.

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