Tracing Phone Apps:

Google, Apple and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week made headlines with announcements of contact tracing mobile apps in the wings. Their purpose is to identify contacts of people who test positive for COVID-19 so appropriate actions can be taken to stem its spread. Cambridge University professor threw some cold water on those apps in a post published Sunday. The apps proposed by Google, Apple and MIT the tracing apps are really just do-something-itis The companies will be launching a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing Their solution will be launched in two phases: In May, both companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. Users will be able to download those apps from Google Play and the Apple App Store. Later in the year, the companies hope to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform by building this functionality into their underlying platforms. That will be a more robust solution than an API and would allow more individuals to participate, if they choose to opt in, as well as enable interaction with a broader ecosystem of apps and government health authorities.A mobile app can be part of the contact tracing solution, but it's no substitute for a massive scale-up in public health infrastructure that can contact trace retrospectively, maintained Michael Reid, MD, assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco. Technology solutions beyond mobile phone apps are needed to get a handle on contact tracing, Reid contended. We need CRM software that will allow you to work remotely and is simple enough so people can contact trace rapidly -- something like a Salesforce application for contact tracing," he said.Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week revealed that a research team was working on a contact tracing scheme based on Bluetooth technology. The MIT-led approach is to have a phone constantly broadcast random strings of numbers, which the researchers likened to "chirps." Nearby phones automatically would remember the chirps they received. A person diagnosed with COVID-19 could upload the chirps broadcasted for the last 14 days to an online database. Meanwhile, people using the MIT app could check the database to see if the chirps their phones "heard" matched the chirps of people diagnosed with the virus. I keep track of what I've broadcasted, and you keep track of what you've heard, and this will allow us to tell if someone was in close proximity to an infected person Another investigator on the project, Marc Zissman, associate head of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Cyber Security and Information Science Division, explained the chirp system would work along the same lines as Apple's "Find My" app. If my phone is lost, it can start broadcasting a Bluetooth signal that's just a random number,"he said. It's like being in the middle of the ocean and waving a light. If someone walks by with Bluetooth enabled, their phone doesn't know anything about me. It will just tell Apple, 'Hey, I saw this light,'" Zissman noted. "The way it has been designed by MIT means that only random numbers, along with the distance from that number, are stored in lists. No data around phone, email, name, or other identifiable data should be share this is MIT's design and there is no telling how the OS developers will modify this method -- meaning that OS developers could implement this in a way not originally intended, leading to the inadvertent sharing of privacy data or purposeful storing of privacy data," Rhoads cautioned. There will be privacy challenges for any application harvesting large amounts of data, "It would be important to understand exactly how those implementing the tracking truly anonymize the data. Previous studies have shown that it is extremely hard to doThe idea of using personal data to combat coronavirus highlights issues we've been struggling with since the Internet was created. Essentially, how do you take advantage of all the good that can be done with technology while also protecting human rights and privacy?" The demands of public health may require flexibility on the application of safeguards "There is a legitimate concern about whether and how we go back to the old way of protecting user data once this crisis is over," Valdetero said. "It will be incredibly important to narrowly craft any access to and use of this data during a time of national emergency to ensure such government tracking doesn't become the new normal once the pandemic recedes.