By Sam Schechner and Rolfe Winkler
Do Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google hold the key for
tracking the spread of Covid-19 and possibly reopening the global
economy?
The tech giants on Friday said they will release tools for
software developers to create so-called contact-tracing apps that
record when smartphones come into close contact with each other.
Such apps could warn users if they were nearby someone later
diagnosed as positive for Covid-19.
The plan, which could potentially cover most of the world's
smartphones, is ambitious and almost surely will be controversial
in certain quarters for privacy and other reasons.
To work, it requires widespread adoption, as well as broad
testing of potentially infected people, and it isn't yet clear
whether government and public-health officials will get behind the
idea.
Apple and Google's efforts put the two companies at the center
of a push to use technology to limit the spread of the virus,
positioning them as potentially unavoidable partners for
governments. That could have an impact on the effort's
effectiveness, as certain countries in Europe have long sought to
limit the power of giant technology companies and viewed their
initiatives with skepticism.
President Trump said Friday that the White House will take a
"very strong look" at the plan.
Apple and Google don't intend their infrastructure to be used by
a wide variety of app developers to build on, according to a person
familiar with the project. Ideally they hope for one app per
country to support a coordinated response by national governments,
though the team is still working through details, the person said.
The companies plan to vet apps closely and limit those that can use
the new protocol. As a result, the two companies might wield a
strong influence over the types of contact-tracing apps that are
released around the world.
In the traditional contact-tracing model, epidemiologists ask
the newly diagnosed to recall where they have been and who they
came into contact with. The goal is to identify, test and isolate
those contacts quickly enough to slow an outbreak. It is less
effective for fast-spreading diseases because conducting interviews
and reaching contacts takes time.
Some experts believe that approach remains best, including an
influential group from Duke University that issued a report on the
topic this week.
As a counter, a growing patchwork of tech companies, governments
and researchers have been developing their own approaches to
facilitating this process, but the differences in how they work
matters to both doctors and privacy activists.
Some countries in Asia have tapped into cellular-network data
for location information to track the close contacts of infected
people. Other places, including Catalonia, in Spain, have released
voluntary apps that send users' symptoms, and frequent location
pings, back to a government health authority, according to health
officials and the app's developer.
Privacy activists have taken issue with the use of location data
even in fighting an epidemic because it can reveal very sensitive
information, stigmatizing people and discouraging cooperation with
public-health authorities.
Instead of tracking devices' specific locations, apps using the
new protocol from Apple and Google would track proximity to other
devices. To do so, they would rely on a technology built into
smartphones called Bluetooth that is normally used to connect
wireless headphones or transfer files to nearby devices.
In a diagram Google published Friday showing how the system
would work, a woman sits next to a man on a park bench. Their
phones each broadcast anonymous identification numbers, and each
log the number the other broadcasts. The ID numbers change every 15
minutes, protecting each user's anonymity.
The man later marks a positive Covid-19 test in the app, which
then uploads keys to a server that match with the ID numbers his
app has broadcast the prior 14 days. The app on the woman's phone
regularly downloads keys for people who have tested positive. Her
phone finds a match with the man's key. The app then gives her
guidance on what to do next -- such as self-isolating, notifying
health officials and getting tested.
The app wouldn't tell the woman the identity of the person she
came into contact with who tested positive. Also to protect her
privacy, and those of other users who never come in contact with a
confirmed coronavirus case, the list of ID numbers she has come
into contact with never leaves her phone. The companies' plan aims
to keep information about who people come into contact with on
personal devices rather than collecting that data and storing it on
servers.
Epidemiologists say they eventually would want to know the
identities of people who had come in contact with a confirmed case.
The system Apple and Google are building wouldn't be able to do
that centrally, but apps could be built on top of it that ask users
if they want to notify health authorities once a match is made.
Apple and Google's plan "appears to mitigate the worst privacy
and centralization risks," Jennifer Granick, surveillance and
cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said
in a statement released Friday. Among other things, she said, the
organization hopes to make sure the data collection remains
voluntary and that it is used only for public-health purposes.
Not yet clear is who will build these apps for public-health
authorities, who will also have to determine a process for logging
positive tests. A self-reporting system would be open to widespread
abuse. Will doctors log positive tests? How will they authenticate
themselves within the app? There is also the risk of potential
false positives if, for instance, Bluetooth registers a contact
with someone on the other side of a window or wall.
Despite the uncertainty, including over what apps Apple and
Google will approve, developers are moving forward.
Dana Lewis and her husband began developing a Bluetooth
contact-tracing app called CoEpi, short for Community Epidemiology
in Action, in late February. Ms. Lewis, 31 years old, has Type 1
diabetes and wanted an app that would let a user report symptoms
such as dry cough that could be relayed to others they had been in
close contact with before the person receives results back from a
Covid-19 test, a process that can take days if the person can be
tested at all.
CoEpi is part of the Temporary Contact Number coalition, a group
of developers working on Bluetooth contact tracing. Accessing the
Bluetooth functionality of smartphones will be easier, she said,
after the Apple-Google protocol is released in May, especially on
iPhones, which Apple controls more tightly than Google controls
Android devices.
Ms. Lewis says CoEpi is working with health organizations and
hopes her app, because it focuses on symptoms rather than positive
tests, would be approved.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Rolfe
Winkler at rolfe.winkler@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 11, 2020 11:29 ET (15:29 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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