Isolate potentially infected individuals, track and trace contacts -- these are steps responsible governments are taking to help stem the tide of the COVID19 pandemic in 2020.
Many governments around the world are developing contact tracing apps which meet the privacy standard advocated by Google and Apple, in order to ensure their apps will function only on Android and IOS devices. Google and Apple, the world’s leading makers of smartphone operating systems, recently released their contact tracing API (known as the “exposure notification” API) to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Some 22 countries (including Ireland) across 5 continents and a number of US states have already requested access to the software. Notably missing from this list are France and the UK.
The API is not itself a contact tracing application -- instead, it enables governments and public health authorities to incorporate the software into their own apps that people install. The API will enable Bluetooth technology to run in the background of the phone, including on a locked phone. Without this ability for background use of Bluetooth technology, the utility of Apps would be greatly decreased.
Users would turn on and unlocks their phones, for the Apps to be able to use Bluetooth and log encounters. Apple and Google are limiting use of their API technology to government contact-tracing Apps.
Privacy activists have praised the protections ordered by Apple and Google’s API, as being in line with the principles of data protection by design and by default.
Google and Apple have explicitly barred use of the API in any apps that seek GPS loca on data from users, which means some apps being developed by public health authori es for contact tracing will not be able to use the API. In addition, the API can will only work on Apps using a decentralized system that uses randomly generated temporary keys created on a user’s device (but not linked to their specific identity or exact location).
The API allows public health officials to decide what constitutes exposure in terms of exposure time and distance. They can adjust transmission risk and other factors according to their own standards.
Read more...
Showing posts with label covid19. Show all posts
Showing posts with label covid19. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
How to do Contact Tracing while Respecting Privacy -- and avoiding the Hunger Games?
With the pandemic continuing, the agreed-upon model for dealing with this (until and if a vaccine can be developed) is a combination of social distancing, stepped-up testing for exposure, and contact tracing.
Following the vectors for infection is a key way to get those infected to self-quarantine. Using smart phones as a tool has been shown by South Korea to be effective. But any system that uses our ubiquitous smartphone to track locations and contacts could bump up against privacy needs, and create surveillance problem. Of course, surveillance of infected persons could also save millions of lives — and put us back on tract to get out to work, and restart the economy. Thus is born a paradoxical challenge: to build a comprehensive tracking system without it becoming a tool of oppression.
South Korea has shown to be effective in the management of the viral outbreak and spread of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. One area is South Korea’s enormous virus testing program. Another is the country’s use of surveillance technology, notably CCTV and the tracking of bank card and mobile phone usage, to identify who to test. The central part of the South Korean strategy is simple: test as many people as possible. But if patients can’t be located, testing capacity doesn’t matter. This is where smart city infrastructure comes in, with the goal of working out where known patients have been and test anyone who might have come into contact with them. South Korea uses contactless payment transactions to plot a card user’s movements on a map. Smartphone data is also used, because phone locations are automatically recorded when devices connect to up to to three transceivers (for triangulation). Facila recognition with CCTV cameras also enable authorities to identify people who have been in contact with COVID-19 patients.
Does this sound like a technological panopticon? To many westerners, such tracking could be anathema to the philosophy of individual privacy. Apple and Google have mapped a possible solution, obfuscating smartphone data enough to obscure individuals, but proving enough data to enable vector mapping of infected persons.
Abuse by authorities of raw location data could reveal sensitive information about anyone — from political dissent to journalists' sources. The big tech companies are looking to enable contact tracing systems without mass surveillance. We will soon see apps that notify potentially exposed users without revealing location data to the government. In some cases, personal information and health privacy laws means keep an infected individual's test results private while still warning anyone who might have entered their physical zone of contact.
The best way to protect geolocation data from abuse, is not to collect it in the first place. Or so suggests Stanford computer scientist Cristina White, working on the https://www.covid-watch.org project. Covid-Watch uses Bluetooth as a kind of proximity detector. The app constantly pings out Bluetooth signals to nearby phones, looking for others that might be running the app within about two meters, or six and a half feet. If two phones spend 15 minutes in range of each other, the app considers them to have had a "contact event." They each generate a unique random number for that event, record the numbers, and transmit them to each other.
GPS location tracking will likely play a role in contact-tracing apps, too, with all of the privacy risks that come with sharing a map of users’ movements.
Read more here…
Following the vectors for infection is a key way to get those infected to self-quarantine. Using smart phones as a tool has been shown by South Korea to be effective. But any system that uses our ubiquitous smartphone to track locations and contacts could bump up against privacy needs, and create surveillance problem. Of course, surveillance of infected persons could also save millions of lives — and put us back on tract to get out to work, and restart the economy. Thus is born a paradoxical challenge: to build a comprehensive tracking system without it becoming a tool of oppression.
South Korea has shown to be effective in the management of the viral outbreak and spread of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. One area is South Korea’s enormous virus testing program. Another is the country’s use of surveillance technology, notably CCTV and the tracking of bank card and mobile phone usage, to identify who to test. The central part of the South Korean strategy is simple: test as many people as possible. But if patients can’t be located, testing capacity doesn’t matter. This is where smart city infrastructure comes in, with the goal of working out where known patients have been and test anyone who might have come into contact with them. South Korea uses contactless payment transactions to plot a card user’s movements on a map. Smartphone data is also used, because phone locations are automatically recorded when devices connect to up to to three transceivers (for triangulation). Facila recognition with CCTV cameras also enable authorities to identify people who have been in contact with COVID-19 patients.
Does this sound like a technological panopticon? To many westerners, such tracking could be anathema to the philosophy of individual privacy. Apple and Google have mapped a possible solution, obfuscating smartphone data enough to obscure individuals, but proving enough data to enable vector mapping of infected persons.
Abuse by authorities of raw location data could reveal sensitive information about anyone — from political dissent to journalists' sources. The big tech companies are looking to enable contact tracing systems without mass surveillance. We will soon see apps that notify potentially exposed users without revealing location data to the government. In some cases, personal information and health privacy laws means keep an infected individual's test results private while still warning anyone who might have entered their physical zone of contact.
The best way to protect geolocation data from abuse, is not to collect it in the first place. Or so suggests Stanford computer scientist Cristina White, working on the https://www.covid-watch.org project. Covid-Watch uses Bluetooth as a kind of proximity detector. The app constantly pings out Bluetooth signals to nearby phones, looking for others that might be running the app within about two meters, or six and a half feet. If two phones spend 15 minutes in range of each other, the app considers them to have had a "contact event." They each generate a unique random number for that event, record the numbers, and transmit them to each other.
GPS location tracking will likely play a role in contact-tracing apps, too, with all of the privacy risks that come with sharing a map of users’ movements.
Read more here…
Friday, April 24, 2020
This Crisis Will Be With Us for Awhile -- What Can We Do to Help, Now?
This pandemic will be with us for awhile. Although studies are showing that quarantine and isolation methods are indeed “flattening the curve” and that we should all continue to keep our physical distance, it is hard not to grow impatient: how long this is likely to last?
IN an interview on with the BBC, Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, says, “Waiting for a vaccine should not be honored with the name ‘strategy;’ that is not a strategy.” Governments should not rely on the advent of vaccines to end the pandemic. Bottom line: a vaccine might be available in 12-18 months. The logistics of inoculating millions will be substantial, once such a solution is mass-produced.
A professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford in the U.K. and Head of the Department of Immunology at the University of Bern in Switzerland, Professor Martin Bachmann said, “The real question is, can you keep it down long enough to have a vaccine? Without a vaccine, we are maybe looking at something like a year. But this would mean that 60–70% of the population would have had exposure to the virus.”
So what should we do, as knowledge workers, for the foreseeable future? As management consultants, the team here at Bluedog recommends a few steps that can be undertaken now, to ease the burden. Start by enabling easy, yet secure, remote access for staff who can effectively work at home.
Many jobs can at least partly be done remotely. Staff who may contribute to a customer experience, for example, should be able to do so. Even back office staff can be part of a solution, even more so in times of crisis. We suggest investing in infrastructure and tools that your employees need to stay productive and in contact, even when they cannot come into the office.
From a human resources perspective, ensure the organization has relevant guidelines and procedures in place that help people to work remotely. This includes training on systems that people need to do their work via remote access. To minimize the disaster recovery challenges, run these systems in the cloud. An important aspect of this infrastructure is an appropriate set of productivity tools that facilitate people working collaboratively. There are a plethora of software suites available that allow this, starting with Microsoft’s Office365 along with Slack, Zoom, Google Hang Outs, and many more. Of course, with Workbench “Always on the Job!” an organization can manage teams and projects, in the cloud.
Automation can improve effectiveness and efficiency. For example, give sales representatives backup by building A.I.-like conversational technologies that take away some of the upfront workload. One way to achieve this is implementing a conversational A.I. that supports your business processes. Pre-screen inquiries with fast and efficient flows that get to the root question a customer contact has. Be sure to enable short implementation times to achieve value.
There are a number of techniques, tools, and technologies that can smooth over the radical changes we are all experiencing — remote work is just one aspect of the changing world, as we all work together to weather this crisis.
IN an interview on with the BBC, Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, says, “Waiting for a vaccine should not be honored with the name ‘strategy;’ that is not a strategy.” Governments should not rely on the advent of vaccines to end the pandemic. Bottom line: a vaccine might be available in 12-18 months. The logistics of inoculating millions will be substantial, once such a solution is mass-produced.
A professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford in the U.K. and Head of the Department of Immunology at the University of Bern in Switzerland, Professor Martin Bachmann said, “The real question is, can you keep it down long enough to have a vaccine? Without a vaccine, we are maybe looking at something like a year. But this would mean that 60–70% of the population would have had exposure to the virus.”
So what should we do, as knowledge workers, for the foreseeable future? As management consultants, the team here at Bluedog recommends a few steps that can be undertaken now, to ease the burden. Start by enabling easy, yet secure, remote access for staff who can effectively work at home.
Many jobs can at least partly be done remotely. Staff who may contribute to a customer experience, for example, should be able to do so. Even back office staff can be part of a solution, even more so in times of crisis. We suggest investing in infrastructure and tools that your employees need to stay productive and in contact, even when they cannot come into the office.
From a human resources perspective, ensure the organization has relevant guidelines and procedures in place that help people to work remotely. This includes training on systems that people need to do their work via remote access. To minimize the disaster recovery challenges, run these systems in the cloud. An important aspect of this infrastructure is an appropriate set of productivity tools that facilitate people working collaboratively. There are a plethora of software suites available that allow this, starting with Microsoft’s Office365 along with Slack, Zoom, Google Hang Outs, and many more. Of course, with Workbench “Always on the Job!” an organization can manage teams and projects, in the cloud.
Automation can improve effectiveness and efficiency. For example, give sales representatives backup by building A.I.-like conversational technologies that take away some of the upfront workload. One way to achieve this is implementing a conversational A.I. that supports your business processes. Pre-screen inquiries with fast and efficient flows that get to the root question a customer contact has. Be sure to enable short implementation times to achieve value.
There are a number of techniques, tools, and technologies that can smooth over the radical changes we are all experiencing — remote work is just one aspect of the changing world, as we all work together to weather this crisis.
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