[threeseed]

> it’s imperative that we remove our political and personal biases and focus on the technology

And then proceeds to use his political and personal bias to write a blog article that actually ignores the technology entirely.

1) Apple and Google should be commended for their approach to contact-tracing. It is opt-in, secure, private and does not provide data to governments or third parties despite a lot of pressure.

2) It is illogical to suggest that Apple or Google could use contract-tracing to invade your privacy. They own the OS. They can do whatever they like and as users we would never know about it. If they wanted to do this they would've done it a decade ago and we likely would've found evidence a decade ago.

3) Spreading FUD about this contact-tracing initiative will literally result in more deaths. I really wish people would be mindful of this and just be careful about what they post.

[post_below]

I was surprised to see this at the top of HN, but at least your response is at the top of the comments.

His points about censorship were as flawed as those about privacy... The YouTube video he mentioned was blatant misinformation which compared incompatible numbers to create the illusion of a valid point (for example case fatality rate of the flu versus an extrapolated estimation of what the population wide fatality rate would be for COVID-19). It was essentially another "COVID is just another flu" conspiracy theory dressed up with convincing sounding numbers.

And people bought it. I was forwarded that video more than once.

The protests that Facebook banned were found (thanks to the work of both homebound Redditors and various reporters) to have been funded by commercial astroturfing companies and run through gun rights groups. It was an orchestrated misinformation campaign that was putting public health at risk.

Again, people bought it, thousands of them.

I agree with the author that the open internet should be sacred and consolidation by a few large players is bad. I agree that privacy and free speech are important. I dislike government intervention that threatens those principles.

But the examples he picked are, ironically, the perfect counters to his premise: Contact tracing that doesn't actually threaten privacy. Companies shutting down undeniable misinformation in an age of Russian troll farms.

If social media companies aren't proactive about tamping down verifiably false information then at some point governments are going to do it, and they'll make a huge mess of it, as they have with most tech regulation in recent years.

The author seems to be unwittingly arguing for the latter outcome.

[anon102010]

Apple's and Google's efforts are for more privacy preserving than ANY goverment efforts would ever be.

Speaking as someone who has worked with govt.

Seriously, this care around privacy DOES NOT EXIST with govt agencies.

[skrebbel]

I once did a project with the Dutch Police and this care about privacy definitely did exist.

For example, they have an app (literally "The Police App") that you can install if you want notifications from police reports in your area. Think missing persons reports, wrong-way riders, etc. Now, they could simply make a database of every app user and track their location in it to know who to send a push notification. But, even though the app requires no signup, they decided that this was too privacy-invading and they had no business tracking people's whereabouts. So for each notification, even if it was only relevant to a tiny low population town in the middle of nowhere, they'd send a push notification including some geofence data to every single app user, and then the app would locally compare that data to the current location and simply block the notification from appearing if it was outside the target region.

That's wasteful and messy, but it was very privacy conscious. I was pretty impressed.

So no, plenty government agencies care a lot about this stuff.

[dr_dshiv]

That's a really interesting example. What would have been the public response if they had done something less conscious?

I'm always curious about how dutch governance works so well!

[skrebbel]

I doubt the public would've noticed.

The Police App isn't that widely used, and there's no obvious way to find out that it's not sending your location to a central server - after all, you still need to give the app permission to read your location!

I think if they had put in a database and gone on some blarb about how the app is entirely anonymous (it is) and the location database is well secured, nobody except a few privacy extremists (akin to the author of the blog post linked here) would've thought twice about it.

They didn't do it out of fear of repercussions but because they took both the actual rules about police-citizen-privacy, and the spirit behind those rules, very seriously.

Note, though, that this app was made by the media and PR department of the police. They didn't have much to lose by respecting privacy, except maybe spending some more tax euros. There's other government agencies that don't share this attitude (eg our intelligence agency, who thinks everybody is a potential terrorist and deserves to be treated as such), and I wouldn't be surprised if even other branches of the police itself wouldn't take that whole privacy shizzle so seriously. Eg the ones occupied with catching bad guys. It's not all roses and sunshine.

But it's still pretty nice.

[holler]

ever heard of a thing called HIPPA?

[cjslep]

Yes. HIPAA provides the government's law enforcement a large amount of conditions under which they are able to acquire an individual's medical records without a warrant.

See 45 C.F.R. § 164.512(f).

Furthermore, the ACLU's position is that HIPAA does not do a good job protecting people's privacy from the government and may be a violation of the people's 4th amendment rights. Unfortunately, it hasn't really been challenged Constitutionally to date, so we don't know.

What we do know is that HIPAA is probably not a good example to "dunk on" someone else, due to these concerns.

[dr_dshiv]

I really wish this was better understood about consumer brand capitalism. These companies would have massive loss in value if they did not preserve privacy.

I am reminded of when an airline roughly pulled a doctor off a plane -- the company lost billions in market value. They won't make that mistake again. That's moral capitalism at it's best. If it had been a government owned service, I don't think there would be such a powerful feedback cycle.

Similarly, because Google would lose billions if they didn't care for my data, I trust them more than gov't.

Note that this only works for consumer brand capitalism -- it didn't work with Equifax.

[megous]

All they need to maintain are appearances. Think somehting like their customer support for their free services. You get some help when you manage to pull a social media attention, otherwise good luck. And killing someone's gmail or developer account, or adsense account is much more directly damaging, than privacy violations.

Appearances and all.

[CaptArmchair]

> These companies would have massive loss in value

s/value/trust/g

Companies might see a decrease in revenue because potential customers lose trust. Or more specifically, they lose trust because they stop believing that the outcome of striking a deal - purchasing a ticket for a flight - won't be as positive: either the direct outcome to themselves, or an indirect outcome towards all customers.

This is exactly the same dynamic as the public views a government. Trust matters. There's absolutely zero difference.

Members of the public trust that mandated politicians will act in their best interests. That, when given power, politicians can and will be held accountable to their personal responsibility. An election is a renewal of an exchange of value: I, as a member of a the public, will cede a part of my freedom to do whatever and submit myself to a vested authority in return for protection of rights.

However, a loss or a gain of trust doesn't necessarily translate into dire consequences for a company nor an incumbent government.

Facebook and Google keep churning happily along despite many scandals. And it remains to be seen if the current inhabitant of the White House will have to vacate in January 2021.

> If it had been a government owned service, I don't think there would be such a powerful feedback cycle.

There's a difference between public administration and party politics. The former is infrastructure, the latter are the people who manage that infrastructure and, theoretically, can be held accountable for their performance.

The primary goal of any government service isn't perpetuating it's own existence or turning a profit. It's serving the interests of the collective first and foremost. Which is vastly different from serving the interests of individual customers.

Succinctly phrased, this is how freedom, capitalism and government work: "Your right to swing your arm stops where my face starts."

Basically, a government service represents the common interests of a community. That common interest could be preventing people from getting hit in the face. So, government services reside in the space between the end of your fist and the start of my face.

Economic capitalism, however, is nothing more then just you - or anyone including Zuckerberg - wielding arms. Because that's what you want to do for whatever reason. Including a profit motive.

If your arm doesn't hit too many faces, and not too many people speak up about it, then you could happily keep swinging about, without caring what people might think.

Whereas if politicians try to curb your freedom to swing about just one bit, a vocal group will be all up in arms about it (pun intended) in no time.

Finally, let's not forget that trust doesn't follow any logic rules, and the memory of a collective is short at best:

The stock price of your airline bounced back, trading above the original price just 5 days after the incident. Which isn't surprising since analysts have stated consumers don't have a choice due to consolidation anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Express_Flight_3411_inc...

Meanwhile, Equifax has been trading higher then before the 2017 data scandal.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/EFX/

[paganel]

> It is opt-in

It won't really be opt-in, and we all know that. Yeah, most probably the Government won't come knocking at your door forcing you to enable the app but what will most probably happen is that the person choosing not (or simply not able) to install the app will find out that they suddenly can't enter certain stores (which will probably have signs like "you're not allowed to shop here if you don't have the tracking app enabled"), or ride public transport, or just be allowed in at their places of work.

[endgame]

A pleasant surprise from Australia: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2020L00480

Coercing the use of COVIDSafe

(1) A person must not require that another person:

(a) download COVIDSafe to a mobile telecommunications device; or

(b) have COVIDSafe in operation on a mobile telecommunications device; or

(c) consent to uploading COVID app data from a mobile telecommunications device to the National COVIDSafe Data Store.

(2) A person must not:

(a) refuse to enter into, or continue, a contract or arrangement with another person (including a contract of employment); or

(b) take adverse action (within the meaning of the Fair Work Act 2009) against another person; or

(c) refuse to allow another person to enter premises; or

(d) refuse to allow another person to participate in an activity; or

(e) refuse to receive goods or services from another person; or

(f) refuse to provide goods or services to another person;

on the ground that, or on grounds that include the ground that, the other person:

(g) has not downloaded COVIDSafe to a mobile telecommunications device; or

(h) does not have COVIDSafe in operation on a mobile telecommunications device; or

(i) has not consented to uploading COVID app data from a mobile telecommunications device to the National COVIDSafe Data Store.

Note that this is only a ministerial determination, which I believe means that it can be changed or withdrawn at any time, and is overridden by legislation. But if Parliament legislates this when it next sits, I will be quite impressed.

[holler]

> Spreading FUD about this contact-tracing initiative will literally result in more deaths.

This comment seems to highlight the OP's main point, namely that the idea of discussion/debate is being removed, replaced with right-think.

[mckirk]

Facts are facts, and if somebody publishes an article spreading falsehoods, the discussion of those points should begin and end with "yeah, that's wrong, please get your story straight".

[pdonis]

> They can do whatever they like and as users we would never know about it.

> If they wanted to do this they would've done it a decade ago and we likely would've found evidence a decade ago.

Aren't these two sentences contradicting each other?

I don't share your faith in Apple's or Google's commitment to privacy. If the source code for these apps is entirely open so independent third parties can audit it, then we can talk. But taking their public statements at face value, given their past track record, seems extremely naive to me.

[hedora]

You’re ignoring the entire second half of the article about how YouTube is pulling videos from credentialed doctors that disagree with some of the WHO recommendations.

Also, you’re ignoring the part where contact tracing becomes mandatory in some jurisdictions if you want to leave your house. So, now you can’t even opt out of the corporate surveillance state (by not carrying your phone) without breaking the law.

[jerome-jh]

The contact tracing, as it is proposed (opt-in), is no more than suggesting infected people to act responsively. The big difference with tracing is that you would be bashed although you act responsively.

Sorry to say point 3) is actually spreading FUD. Contact tracing can only be efficient if enforced.

[Fellshard]

Once the capability is built, governments /will/ coerce its mandatory use in the name of public health.

[aaaaaaaaaaa10]

The quarantines in place have resulted in far fewer cancer screenings and treatments, which will "literally result in more deaths". Can't we have an honest debate without censorship instead of accusing any dissent as "FUD"?