Virus Alert Apps Had Limited Success

 Having followed some of the Virus tracking software, found this to be insightful.  Though late.   Fundamentally the approaches won't work without elements of privacy being violated,  limiting participation and having the potential of misuse.  Bottom line,  the data gathered will be wrong. 

Why Apple, Google Virus Alert Apps Had Limited Success

The New York Times, Natasha Singer, May 27, 2021

Apple and Google's smartphone-based virus alert application has not been the game-changer that the collaboration suggested, with some researchers claiming the product and policy choices made by the companies have constrained its utility. The app uses Bluetooth signals to detect users coming into close contact with those who later test positive for the coronavirus; it then anonymously alerts others with whom they may have crossed paths. Computer scientists have cited accuracy problems with the proximity-detecting Bluetooth technology, while some users have cited failed notifications. The University of Minnesota's Michael T. Osterholm said the software's privacy features, designed to bar government agencies from identifying app users, have complicated research to determine whether the alerts helped to impede virus transmission.

Contact Tracking Failing

I have read in other places it is not only a failure in the US.   Is it merely a measure of trust?  Having enough people buy into the capability, without clear direct indication of value to the user.  Could it have used a game oriented model?   Anyone done or proposed that?    Seems  a potential for future efforts.

Contact Tracing Is Failing in the U.S. Here’s How to Fix It.

For starters, turn responsibility over to local organizations and communities, where trust is higher.

Sarit Markovich Kellogg Insight

As COVID cases surged across the U.S. last December, the CDC reckoned with a stark truth: contact tracing couldn’t be scaled up to match the virus’ spread.

The practice of contact tracing—or identifying, assessing, and managing people who have been exposed to a disease—is an essential tool for controlling outbreaks by interrupting a disease’s transmission chains. And indeed, combined with lockdowns and mask ordinances, some countries have had great success using contact tracing to reduce outbreaks.  ... "

Airlines to Ask Contact Information

Expected, likely useful.  A firm requirement?   Will it get the usual pushback on privacy?

Airlines plan to ask passengers for contact-tracing details

In this Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, file photo, travelers wear face coverings as they queue up at the north security checkpoint in the main terminal of Denver International Airport, in Denver. Major U.S. airlines say they will ask passengers on flights to the United States for information that public health officials could use for COVID-19 contact tracing. The trade group Airlines for America said Friday, Feb. 19, that the carriers will turn over the information to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

The U.S. airline industry is pledging to expand the practice of asking passengers on flights to the United States for information that public health officials could use for contact tracing during the pandemic.

An industry trade group said Friday that the carriers would turn over the information to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which could use it to contact passengers who might be exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19.

Delta and United have been doing that since December. On Friday, an industry trade group said that American, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue and Hawaiian will also ask passengers to make their names, phone numbers, email and physical addresses available to the CDC.  ... "

UK Contact Tracing Apps Talk to Each Other

Interesting look at these and comparison to other Tracing Apps in europe. Clear contribution to decrease in spread?

UK contact-tracing apps start to talk to each other in the BBC

The United Kingdom's various contact-tracing apps can now intercommunicate, allowing people to be matched from the different areas they cover.   Until now, users needed to download separate Covid-19 apps and change settings if - for example - they travelled from England to Scotland. Those who already have one of the apps do not need to do anything to make the new system work.

However, the apps do not communicate with other European equivalents.

The products that have become interoperable are:

England and Wales's NHS Covid-19

Northern Ireland's StopCOVID

Protect Scotland

Jersey COVID Alert

Beat COVID Gibraltar

The apps all use Bluetooth signals to log when two people's smartphones come into close proximity to each other.  These readings can then be used if one person becomes infected with coronavirus and registers the fact, to let others know if they were nearby for long enough to need to self-isolate.  All the apps are now able to access the anonymised IDs of people who tested positive because they have begun sharing a computer server set up by Scotland via Amazon Web Services.  .... "

Virus Tracing Apps have Problems

Privacy, but then what value do they deliver?

Virus-Tracing Apps Are Rife with Problems. Governments Are Rushing to Fix Them
The New York Times
Natasha Singer; Aaron Krolik
July 8, 2020

Governments are scrambling to fix coronavirus contact-tracking applications riddled with privacy and security flaws, which human rights groups and technologists warned could place hundreds of millions of people at risk for stalking, scams, identity theft, or government surveillance. For example, in June Britain ditched a virus-tracing app it was developing in favor of software from Apple and Google promoted as more "privacy preserving." Analysis by the Guardsquare mobile app security company determined that "the vast majority" of government-used virus-tracing apps are inadequately secure, and can be exploited by hackers easily. Location-tracking apps, which some countries are using to alert people of possible virus exposure or to enforce quarantines, are drawing heightened scrutiny because some continuously collect data on users' health, exact whereabouts, and social interactions. Some digital rights groups said these app launches are designed mainly to assure the public that the government is taking action. ... 

Apple, Google Expand Coronavirus Warning Software

 Have not seem any indications of this being very successful.   Can someone point me to a technical review?   Note the mention of a real time warning popup being implied.    Privacy implications?

Apple, Google Expand Coronavirus Warning Software

The Washington Post    By Reed Albergotti

September 1, 2020

Apple and Google have announced an expansion of their coronavirus warning software in order to enable state health agencies to participate without needing customized applications. The software is built into the operating systems on Google's Android phones and Apple's iPhones, and employs Bluetooth to determine if people have spent significant time near each other; the software may alert a participant's close contacts if that person tests positive for the virus. The new exposure notifications express option could expedite adoption by relieving states of the need to design their own contact-tracing apps. Users in participating states may receive a pop-up opt-in notification, and they can share their Bluetooth data and receive alerts when they come in contact with positive-testing participant.. " 

Corona App Gateway for the European Commission

Continued work to privately digitize the understanding of contact tracing.

SAP, Deutsche Telekom to Build Corona App Gateway for European Commission
Reuters
Busvine. Douglas via the ACM 

The European Commission (EC) has signed a contract under which Germany's SAP and Deutsche Telekom will build a cross-border software platform to enable communication between coronavirus contact-tracing applications. The gateway's objective is to help slow Covid-19 by logging encounters between people traveling abroad and issuing push warnings should one become infected. This roaming function would be an add-on to Bluetooth-based smartphone tracker apps, which currently only operate within national borders. SAP and Deutsche Telekom, which designed Germany's Corona-Warn-App, proposed the gateway in June, when European Union countries agreed on a framework to make the apps interoperable. EC spokesperson Johannes Bahrke said it should be possible to launch a pilot gateway in three to four weeks.  ... " 

Microphone Signature Tracking of Covid Exposure

Interesting approach,  with approval of the phone owner I assume, they could the release of such 'random tokens', and another phone within some radius, would pick it up.  Producing a map trace of exposure.  To be analyzed on a secure, trusted database.  Assuming that a significant number of people would approve.

Using Your Phone's Microphone to Track Possible Covid-19 Exposure
Ohio State News
Laura Arenschield
June 30, 2020

Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) have proposed a Covid-19 tracking system that would rely on signals sent and received from cellphone microphones and speakers. The system would generate random, anonymous IDs for each phone and automatically send ultrasonic signals between the microphones and speakers of phones within a certain radius. A person who has tested positive for Covid-19 would update their anonymous IDs and the timestamp when the IDs were generated in the past two weeks to a central database managed by a trusted health care authority. The data would be used for contact tracing. Said OSU's Dong Xuan, "The phone will periodically generate some kind of sound token and send that token to nearby phones—and the key advantage over other technologies is that the ultrasound could have limited range and will not penetrate obstacles such as walls."... ' 

On Contact Tracing Apps

Intriguing piece I have only scanned so far.  What got me most interested is that the tracing aspect included a considerable human element, at least if you were not willing to do lots of sharing of location information that could well be seen as very privacy invasive, her a considerable, non-technical look at the challenge.   

Everything You Have Read About Contact Tracing Apps Is Wrong  in Knowledge@Wharton

Technology sounds like an attractive solution to contact tracing, but apps are at best a minor supplement to a large effort. In this opinion piece, Lyle Ungar writes that “we should be taking best practices from call centers, where human callers are supported by chatbots and information systems, supplemented with privacy-respecting apps on people’s phones that allow them to share information more easily and accurately. In the end, contact tracing is not an app, but a combined effort between technology, human tracers, and the general population.” Ungar is a machine learning researcher and professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Contact tracing is key to reopening society. Best estimates put widespread vaccination in the U.S. more than two years in the future, and we can’t safely resume public life until we can identify who has been exposed to COVID-19, test them for the disease, and isolate them if they are sick. The U.S. has far too few human contact tracers, with states planning to hire only a tiny fraction of the estimated 180,000 contract tracers needed. Contract tracing apps have been proposed as one way to mitigate this problem. People are worried about their privacy; they should be even more worried about whether the apps will help. Even expert articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), underestimate the challenges.

Most of the discussion of contact tracing focuses on exposure notification apps (i.e., TraceTogether, PwC), which use Bluetooth signals to identify individuals who may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. The most widely supported protocols (by Google and Apple) respect privacy; they broadcast and receive random numbers from your phone, but don’t reveal your name or phone numbers. Google and Apple do not allow the apps to share geolocation or other private information. Such apps are only effective in relatively tight communities, such as universities, where high adoption rates can be achieved. In a general community, where adoption is voluntary, adoption rates are vastly lower (the highest adoption rates are 32% in Australia and 38% in Iceland) and so the apps are virtually useless.  ... "

Steve Gibson on Why Contract Tracing Won't Work

I have inserted links below to this analysis of Apple/Google attempts at generalized software based tracking.   

See also related Bruce Schneier article:   https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/05/me_on_covad-19_.html   With considerable and often thoughtful discussion.

Steve Gibson  in Podcast:
Contact Tracing Apps R.I.P.    https://twit.tv/shows/security-now/episodes/768

https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-768-Notes.pdf

Software-based Contact Tracing is Doomed

Apple, Google and Europe on Contact Tracing

Continuing to follow this. Since Europe has different ideas about security,  some disagreement was inevitable.

Apple, Google Start to Win Over Europe to Their Virus-Tracking Technology
The Wall Street Journal
Sam Schechner; Jenny Strasburg

European nations including Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands are considering or have opted for technology developed by Apple and Google for smartphone contact-tracing applications to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The Apple/Google system is designed for phones running Bluetooth, which emit a unique, frequently changing identification number and record the ID numbers of any phone in proximity for more than a few minutes. In this decentralized model, an infected person's phone uploads data on all of the ID numbers it has broadcast over a set time period to a temporary server; other phones then check the server to see if any of the IDs are among those they recorded, and alert the user if a match is detected.  ... " 

Apple and Google will not Allow Use of Location Tracking in Tracing System.

Does seem to be a minimal embedded restriction to Location Privacy.

Apple, Google Ban Use of Location Tracking in Contact Tracing Apps
By Reuters
May 12, 2020

Can contact tracing apps be trusted? 
Apple and Google will not allow the use of location tracking in apps using their new contact tracing system.

Apple and Google said they would not allow the use of location tracking in apps using their new contact tracing system to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The system would be used by public health authorities to notify people who have been in contact with others who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The primary goal of the system, according to the companies, is privacy, and preventing governments from using the system to compile data on citizens.

The system uses Bluetooth signals from phones to detect encounters and does not use or store GPS location data.

The companies also will permit just one app per country to use the contact system, but they will support countries that opt for a state or regional approach, and said U.S. states will be allowed to use the system. ... "

From Reuters  ... full article at the link.
General overview of method and privacy restrictions.
Technical API Guidelines and Descriptions.

Digital Contact Tracing.

Have now heard several analyses that have doubted that Tracking can work.

How Digital Contact Tracing Could Work in the US, and Why It May Never Happen
By David Cardinal
                                                                                         
It’s widely agreed that re-opening major portions of our economy relatively safely will require an extensive testing and contact-tracing system. Manual contact tracing — where those who test positive are interviewed about recent travel and person-to-person contacts — is expensive, hard to scale, and error-prone. So it is natural to see if digital technologies can help.

There are almost as many different approaches to how that might work as there are countries. But they fall into a few broad categories in terms of which technologies they use, how much data they store, and how they protect privacy. Here’s a look at some of the current and planned efforts, with a focus on those being piloted for deployment in the US.

All Roads Lead to the Smartphone
While there are some limited efforts using dedicated devices that have proven effective in controlled situations such as nursing homes, for broad deployment among the general public the obvious device of choice is the smartphone. Most people have one, they have a broad array of sensors, and they can be programmed to run custom apps. But “most people” isn’t “all people,” and many older phones don’t have the needed capability to run some of the proposed apps. So even phone-based solutions will need to deal with making their platform ubiquitous.

Stanford, Google, Apple: Protecting Privacy Via BLE
 ... Perhaps the most “private” solution being proposed is one that was first publicized as Covid Watch, led by Stanford researcher Christina White and now embraced by the unlikely alliance of Apple and Google. This solution relies entirely on logging anonymized Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) contacts between two users. Each phone broadcasts a random ID that changes every 10-20 minutes — meaning it should be impossible to use the IDs to track a specific user or find out more about them. At the same time, nearby phones log all the IDs they receive. So far, no data has left anyone’s phone.

When a user tests positive for infection, they can get a code from a medical professional that allows the app to upload the recent (probably last 14 days worth of) random IDs that their phone has broadcast. At least once a day, phones running the app download a full set of “infected” IDs, and compare them with the list they have logged. If there is a match, then the user gets the day, duration, and signal strength of the contact, so they know that they may have come in contact with someone who was infected.  ... " 

Drones Taking Your Temperature?

Sounds infeasible,  privacy?

Connecticut City Testing Drone That Detects Fevers, Coughs
The Hill   By Zack Budryk
April 23, 2020

A "pandemic drone" being tested by police in Westport, CT, in cooperation with drone manufacturer Draganfly, will use sensors to detect fever temperatures, heart rates, sneezing, and coughing in crowds. Police say the drone can monitor body temperatures from altitudes of nearly 200 feet. The drone will not be used on private land and is not equipped with facial recognition technology. Said Westport Police Chief Foti Koskinas, "Using drones remains a go-to technology for reaching remote areas with little to no manpower required. Because of this technology, our officers will have the information and quality data they need to make the best decision in any given situation."... '

IBM Using Contract Tracing App with Employees in India

The general idea seems to be expanding, with resulting data.  Systems to date are voluntary.  Some details at link about use, data, privacy implications.

IBM testing COVID-19 contact tracing app with employees in India

IBM is testing an opt-in mobile app in India that will track employees' locations to help monitor the spread of the coronavirus, Protocol reported Thursday. The app will identify and notify employees who might have "come in close contact with a person affected in the last 14 days," a spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement. IBM joins major tech companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft that are leveraging location data to track COVID-19, raising concerns about how users' privacy will .... 

Apple, Google to Harness Phones for Virus Infection Tracking

Much going around about this now.  Just taking a closer look.  Can tech harvest the right data to leverage a solution? Privacy pushback?  More to follow.

Apple, Google to Harness Phones for Virus Infection Tracking
Associated Press
Frank Bajak; Matt O'Brien in AP News

Apple and Google have launched a joint effort to help public health agencies around the world leverage smartphones to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The companies plan to add new software to handsets to make it easier to use Bluetooth wireless technology to track people who may have been infected by coronavirus carriers. The companies want to help national, state, and local governments roll out apps for "contact tracing" that will run on iPhones and Android phones alike. The system harnesses short-range Bluetooth signals, and collects information about other phones with which they came into close proximity. This data can be used to alert others who might have been infected by known carriers of the coronavirus. Said Boston University’s Tiffani Li, “It’s not a replacement for just having widespread testing, which would be more accurate, but clearly we have a huge shortage of tests.”   .... '