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Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

Slightly offtopic, but it bothers me that the tech community has remained silent or supportive for contact tracing technology, when there were massive outcries for the past several years regarding other kinds of surveillance-enabling technology like face recognition. In general I would prefer that contact tracing technology not exist.

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I would argue that the fact that Apple and Google are working together to develop a contact tracing protocol goes to show the general level of dissatisfaction with the way contact tracing is done in other parts of the world and the privacy implications.

It's important to keep in mind that not all surveillance technologies and methodologies are created equal. The reason that the Apple/Google contact tracing technology has received so much praise is because it's more or less decentralized and all of the data is cryptographically anonymized. Any data that could be associated an individual changes periodically, so it's borderline impossible to track someone with it. There is no central database aside from the list of ID's that are marked sick. There is no location data associated either. In fact, it's blocked by the OS.

There are ways to implement contact tracing so that unnecessary information is not shared and so that you are in control of what gets shared and when. This is not the case for (say) face recognition on a CCTV feed.

I'm sure there are ways. But can you ensure this specific app, recommended (or mandated) by your government, puts you in control and doesn't try to sneak a quick one past you? What would be the incentive for your government to ensure that instead of making the population much more observable and thus governable under the guise of taking care of your health? It's literally doing work against government interests, and the governments aren't usually very good at that. Same with major companies which just happen to be also major accumulators of stockpiles of tracking and surveillance information about you. Maybe this one they'd lay down their instincts and truly will roll out a perfectly privacy-preserving solution. But could you trust them to do that?

As an example, the one used in Singapore is open source and implements a public standard (bluetrace.io), so you don't even need to trust them, you can check it yourself. And before you ask, yes, people have decompiled the app to verify this.

I also find it odd that so many people who supported a physical lockdown baulked at the privacy implications of an app.

Obviously everyone has their own set of value judgments, so I can't say such people are wrong.

But my view is that an enforced lockdown wreaks far greater damage to society than the potential privacy implications from a tracking app. If it's an either-or choice, I'm choosing a tracking app over lockdown every single time. It's a no-brainer, and I consider myself a reasonably privacy-conscious individual.

Some countries had no lockdown instead using an app and testing. I'd say it's worth it, considering it works privately until someone is found to be infected.

More and more I'm getting to the point where owning a mobile phone just isn't worth the tradeoffs. The negative attributes are starting to outweigh the positives.

I think I'm just going to stop paying to own one... All I really need is a laptop.

They haven't remained silent, they've been silenced. Slight difference.

I got slammed on here for even raising the question.

The silencing, call out culture in this industry sickens me more than anything about this particular instance of it.

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