As someone newly reading about this proposal, I'm curious to know which element of privacy is most of concern to people -- to educate myself on what tradeoffs some policymaker might understand and make some judgement call about. (wishful thinking)
(Suppose someone in charge of virus response is totally naive and says the old phrase, "what does anyone have to be worried about losing privacy, in the face of this public health crisis?" Or, "why wouldn't we want to know exactly when and where the transmission happened, to identify some trouble spot and stop it?")
Are we more concerned about one's location every 5 min being revealed? What if coffee shops/bus stations/shopping centers broadcast beacons and essentially became fixed known users -- doesn't that defeat this? And doesn't your phone already reveal location to anyone with sufficient access / authority on cell networks?
Are we more concerned about revealing who you associate with? Again, isn't that already possible through cell locations?
Are we not losing something by giving up recording the location element of the transmission event?
What are some examples of how this technology (if implemented wrong) could be misused, that are not already available?
And here's a related public policy question -- if we think ridiculous the people who are jumping to reopen businesses (and states) at the cost of putting people's lives at risk, why is privacy so important versus saving lives if a more effective (but slightly less private) information gathering mechanism could be implemented?
> What if coffee shops/bus stations/shopping centers broadcast beacons and essentially became fixed known users -- doesn't that defeat this?
No, because the list of beacons you received is only stored in your phone, so that would only allow you to determine that you went to a coffee shop often, and no one would be able to get a list of anyone who was close to the coffee shop.
This of course assumes that the app/OS vendor does not include hidden functionality that uploads your received beacons, but in that case they could just activate the GPS and upload the location regardless of the contact tracing system chosen.
The coffee shop would be able to determine how many smartphones are present near its location at any time (although this could be mitigated in principle by having smartphones send many beacons if they are receiving few, so the number is approximately constant), but would not know anything about them, including whether they are the same smartphones that it detected at a different time.
Government access to private data: revealing location & contacts. I think privacy might be the wrong description, I think it's more about surveillance of the people by the state, which is not acceptable for a huge percentage of people I know. Privacy is most of the time the better wording, but I think surveillance is the better fitting term for this occasion.
Just compare it to the DDR (German democratic republic, the communist state). Is it similar to the surveillance by DDRs Stasi, which tried to track every move and every word of dissidents?
As an additional point: You can't force people to use the app (as far as i know). I don't think this is in any way compatible with basic human rights as formulated by the Grundgesetz (which I support, we are a democracy where the power comes from the people and not an authoritarian regime). They have to opt-in themselves. You have to make the app attractive so that people want to opt-in.
The whole point of contact tracing is to give the government access to contacts when needed (location is much less important). Experts also say that to be effective these apps have to be installed on 80% of smartphones [1], so in practice they have to be made mandatory.
Everything else is a distraction. Either these apps are needed and the above applies, or they are not and let's forget about them.
> The whole point of contact tracing is to give the government access to contacts when needed (location is much less important).
Yeah, but only when needed, only as much as strictly necessary and deleting it immediately afterwards. I don't think we will allow general surveillance without a fight with a huge part of the population and fundamental changes to our society and our way to live.
Also, I don't agree at all. One right doesn't simply cancel another. And a mandatory app is simply not compatible with our idea of freedom, at least as I understood our basic law. Maybe in certain situation but a general surveillance is illegal.
We won't throw away our (liberal) democracy and the rule of law.
You can't set a target and just simply force the population to comply. I think we can achieve a good penetration without resorting to authoritarian measures. We have achieved some good numbers so far here in Germany, we can use this to further fight the coronavirus without turning into an authoritarian regime. Even our scientists, e.g. Prof. Drosten from the Charite, understand that politics is not science, there are limits what's possible and always stresses that the society itself must decide to act.
This has nothing to do with democracy, surveillance, or freedom.
Nothing is absolute and a balance has to be struck. Germany is quite controlling in many aspects so it is a little strange that this would be an issue.
If contact tracing is needed then it should be deployed in the most effective way.
This is temporary and does not restrict people's freedoms at all. The controversy is manufactured on ideological grounds at a time when pragmatism should prevail.
Claiming that this would be throwing away democracy or the rule of law is plainly ridiculous. I think Germany is still traumatised by its history and this often has unfortunate consequences (we already saw it several times in recent years).
>If contact tracing is needed then it should be deployed in the most effective way
I, and many others, do not agree with your opinion that it should be mandatory. No other country has mandated contact tracing apps for their non-quarantined population.
There's no proof that a contact tracing application would be effective after there are already millions of cases. There is no indication that there will be enough tests to identify asymptomatic carriers, so if you were vulnerable you'd still need to self-isolate to be safe.
Already 1 out of 5 people have antibodies to this. We're on our way to herd immunity and a death rate of something like 1 out of 500 people. We were trying to slow things down so that hospitals were not overwhelmed, and we've done so. Unless someone comes up with a vaccine that can be mass produced in the next couple months this will all be a moot point.
Is there a reason you don't think their numbers can be extrapolated to other places? Last week they were at 15% in NYC, and this jived with the numbers form other places, like the U.K., and I think also Germany.
It seems that as we get more data we're find more cases, and in increasing amounts, across the board. Which lowers the death rate and means we can reach herd immunity sooner than we thought.
(Suppose someone in charge of virus response is totally naive and says the old phrase, "what does anyone have to be worried about losing privacy, in the face of this public health crisis?" Or, "why wouldn't we want to know exactly when and where the transmission happened, to identify some trouble spot and stop it?")
Are we more concerned about one's location every 5 min being revealed? What if coffee shops/bus stations/shopping centers broadcast beacons and essentially became fixed known users -- doesn't that defeat this? And doesn't your phone already reveal location to anyone with sufficient access / authority on cell networks?
Are we more concerned about revealing who you associate with? Again, isn't that already possible through cell locations?
Are we not losing something by giving up recording the location element of the transmission event?
What are some examples of how this technology (if implemented wrong) could be misused, that are not already available?
And here's a related public policy question -- if we think ridiculous the people who are jumping to reopen businesses (and states) at the cost of putting people's lives at risk, why is privacy so important versus saving lives if a more effective (but slightly less private) information gathering mechanism could be implemented?