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Italy Working On Coronavirus Tracing App To Help Lockdown Exit (reuters.com) 74

Posted by BeauHD from the tread-cautiously dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Italian authorities are working on introducing a smartphone app that would help health services trace the contacts of people who test positive for the coronavirus as the government looks at ways of gradually lifting a lockdown imposed a month ago. Innovation minister Paola Pisano acknowledged that launching the app would raise major issues of privacy and data control, something which would have to be resolved before it went into operation. But it could help reduce contagion and limit the impact of a disease that has killed more than 17,000 people in Italy in just over a month. "This is delicate terrain. I think we are all conscious of that and we must remain so," she told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.

Italy launched a fast tender for a monitoring and remote medical support app on March 24 and received hundreds of proposals which are currently under evaluation by a specially created task force. The app would be only one part of a wider monitoring and support system, Pisano said. It would function on a voluntary basis and would have to be limited to clearly defined ends and guarantee anonymity as well as meet technical requirements. The app would record when it came into proximity with another smartphone user with the app, for how long and at what distance and if a person tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities would be able to trace the contacts and alert them. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) is calling for a pan-European mobile app to track the spread of the coronavirus "instead of the current hodge-podge of apps used in various EU countries which could breach people's privacy rights," Reuters reported on Monday. "The EDPS said the use of temporary broadcast identifiers and bluetooth technology for contact tracing protected both privacy and personal data, but voiced concerns about the variety of apps sprouting up."

"Given these divergences, the European Data Protection Supervisor calls for a pan-European model COVID-19 mobile application, coordinated at EU level," Wojciech Wiewiorowski, the head of the EU privacy watchdog, said in a statement. "Ideally, coordination with the World Health Organization should also take place, to ensure data protection by design globally from the start," he said.
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Italy Working On Coronavirus Tracing App To Help Lockdown Exit More

Italy Working On Coronavirus Tracing App To Help Lockdown Exit

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  • For those wondering what the app would do (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @07:11PM (#59923516)
    I saw an Ars Technica article that explained the scheme.

    The app uses WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, etc to finger print every phone you get near.

    Then all the data goes into a data base.

    If you get sick they pull up the data and contact everyone you've been near to get them tested. Anyone who tests positive gets a 2-3 week quarantine.

    It would probably work. 60-70% have smartphones already. It wouldn't be a leap to close the remaining 30-40% gap. It would automate the difficult and expensive task of contact tracing in a pandemic.

    It would also be a database of every single person you've come in contact with. That's some serious 1984 shit x10, and I don't see any way that we can stop that data from being abused.

    If we could though, it would pretty much solve the pandemic problem in developed countries. But by it's very nature you have to be able to trace individuals. There's no way to anonymize the data that I can see, since if you did that you couldn't contact the people who need testing.

    • There's just one problem: I have Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS disabled on my phone.

      • Well then you won't be allowed out of the house. Perhaps carriers and handset makers could be prevailed upon to forcefully (and permanently) enable the necessary radio functions? After all, if you won't comply, millions will die!!

        • That should be funny to watch, considering my employer would be very, very upset to enable either Bluetooth or Wifi, and they basically own our ruling party here.

          Gotta get some popcorn.

          • I suppose that means you don't have your own device? We'll mark that down on your social credit score. That, combined with the fact that you still post on Slashdot, means you are now travel restricted.

            • You mean I have to stay inside, not leave the house, work from home and spend my leisure time indoors?

              What the hell is this conversation about? You make a fuss about literally changing nothing!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Thats why a South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and other nations put a lot more through into "tracking" people who had wuflu and their contacts. ie using the entire telco network to work back over a sick persons past.

        • And although legal in those countries because privacy is both socially and legally weak, the EU and even the US wouldn't allow the government to do such tracking.

          As with all these things, expect a story 2 years from now how these apps and databases did absolutely nothing but how the government is keeping and expanding upon them.

          Moreover, these databases already exist, ask Facebook, I'm sure they have much more penetration as any government app, much more detail and the people already agreed to give it up fo

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Re "I'm sure they have much more penetration as any government app"
            ... is the telco networks... got a working account and connection - tracked.
            Thats what the gov is tracking... not just social media use on a smartphone...
            This is cell tower tracking data in real time not some app use or if social media was in use.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Or if they want something from Europe that's GDPR compliant, Iceland has an app already in place - Rakning C-19 [github.com]. A large chunk of the country is using it.

          There is no "central database". Your GPS points and bluetooth detections are stored inside your phone. If and only if you're diagnosed, you're asked - but not required - to authorize sharing your data. If you choose to authorize it, your data is made available to all other people running the app, which is compared to where they've been so they can be wa

          • > * Battery drain. This is a big problem. They're working
            > on fixing it; there's a ticket on its github page for it.

            Sorry, cannot be fixed. WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS are, by their very nature, heavy users of battery power. When people complain about phone batteries discharging rapidly, the usual reccomendation is "turn off WiFi, Blutooth, and GPS". And this is not coming from tinfoil privacy activists.

            Cellphone batteries can only survive a fixed number of charge/disharge cycles, before going bad. Of

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rei ( 128717 )

              It actually has only been getting complaints on Android, not Apple. Implementation-specific. There's a number of things that can be done to reduce battery consumption, and they're investigating a number of them in the ticket [github.com].

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Re "Battery drain"... the smartphone is on and the telco knows its on... the tower is tracking each connected smartphone...
            " App closing" .. just use the telco tower data like police, FBI, the NSA, GCHQ do 24/7 do... in any EU nation.
        • wuflu? Goddammit, it's not influenza. Call it wu-sars, if you must.

    • ATT with out an International plan
      Rates are:
      On Land: $2.05/MB ($.002/KB)
      Cruise Ships: $4.10/MB ($.004/KB)
      Airlines: $10.24/MB ($.01/KB)

    • > 60-70% have smartphones already.

      Only 60-70? Really? I would expect the percentage of people with smartphones in Europe to be significantly higher than that.

      • Because you are myopic. Sure, in silicon valley or whatever saturation will be above 80%, but what the fuck... most people do not have smart phones on this planet, or even in this country. Anyone telling you different is lying.
      • Really, while smartphone penetration among young is almost universal, among middle aged people not so much and pensioners almost universally use dumbphones. We have a lot of pensioners.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      The underlying insanity. When it catch a diesease and get over it, you are not immune to it, you still get it, you just fight it off really easily because your immune system has been trained to eliminate it 'BUT' for you immune system to react, you still have to get it enough for it to kick into gear and fight it off. You will be testing and isolating the same people over and over again, to infinity in total insanity. The reality is, it is far less dangerous than the idiots testing regime would indicate (on

      • Why do you think that this tracking system will actually used for the disease? History indicates another, more important use, to those who want it. Never let a good crisis go to waste...

    • It would also be a database of every single person you've come in contact with. That's some serious 1984 shit x10, and I don't see any way that we can stop that data from being abused.

      Singapore's app has an interesting approach. The database of your contacts is stored locally, on your device, and you have to take explicit action to share it with the government, which they only ask you to do if you test positive. They values beaconed by other devices (which your device collects and stores in this database), change frequently and only the government has the keys to decrypt them and identify the source device, so that third parties can't used the beaconed values to track people effectivel

  • A proposal for tracking apps without compromising privacy: https://github.com/DP-3T/docum... [github.com] More at https://www.pepp-pt.org/ [pepp-pt.org]

    • Big advantage here of working across borders by not being ties into any one particular health authority.

  • "instead of the current hodge-podge of apps used in various EU countries which could breach people's privacy rights,"

    Yes, I prefer my violations of privacy to be globally standardized.

    "Ideally, coordination with the World Health Organization should also take place, to ensure data protection by design globally from the start," he said.

    And why, by any stretch of the imagination, is the World Health Organization an ideal provider of ensuring data protection?

    • Well, at least we have [newsweek.com] some interesting night sky [biblehub.com] to take our mind off the global tracking issues.

    • why, by any stretch of the imagination, is the World Health Organization an ideal provider of ensuring data protection?

      They are not. But if the Europeans are looking for a global standard and hope it will work for contact tracing travel as well as domestically WHO is probably the only international organization with any interest or ability in making that happen.

      I don't like the idea now. If we end up like Italy in a month or two I might like it more.

      • What is it that makes Europe tend to think "World [Anything] [Anything]" is probably a good idea, and makes Americans think it's probably going to end up a horrifically dysfunctional idea?

        I find these predispositions intriguing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        The EU nations demand privacy in there own nation as a reason not to track using telco data but are happy to mention an international organization?
        Privacy over finding who is spreading wuflu but the EU nations are fine with an international organization?

      • I'm sure China^W the WHO has great interest in European citizens location data.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          the WHO has great interest

          The acronym you were looking for is NWO.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          All the NSA and other NATO workers who have to work on site under US enforced "buddy" conditions.
          In the past NATO nations would be protected from Communist data gathering.
          A free map of all workers, contractors and staff at any NATO site, base, port, camp, fort given to the WHO but not a EU nations health experts.
          Now the EU nations hand over all their nations telco data sets to the WHO and UN for free. So the WHO can work out who has wuflu and report back to the EU in "private" to protect EU nations "pri

  • This will be a much needed GLOBAL solution... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ClarkMills ( 515300 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @07:20PM (#59923544)

    Good project for OSS though the obvious elephant in the room is privacy.
    Many things to be worked through but absolutely needed to get out of this without reseting the isolation clock.

    • From: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nation... [stuff.co.nz]
      3/5 down the page:

      TRACING APP

      Singapore was planning to open source its technology and the Government has made initial contact with the Singaporean Government to register interest in using the Bluetooth-based app, she said.

      TraceTogether can record interactions between a phone and any other phones nearby that have the app installed.

      The data is stored on the phone and if the user tests positive they then release the data to the Government for contact tracing. Close contac

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rapjr ( 732628 )
        This helps preserve privacy for most people. There may be some cryptographic tricks that can be used to do the computation/comparison that also preserve privacy. For example, homomorphic encryption allows computation on a dataset without unencrypting the data. It is still a very expensive computation, but if it's run on peoples phones rather than in the cloud there is little cost for the central server and who cares if it takes 30 minutes to run on your phone? The amount of computation needed could be l

  • I've seen various app's my problem has always been its not open source so I can not see how it works and I'm not nor my family installing a tracking app, the phone companies can already do this

    I repeat the phone companies already do this, an app would have the advantage of being able to trace within 2meters but come on why dont the phone companies just use their data... my guess - lawyers and privacy... they already know its very very risky

     

  • Does anyone actually believe that any government or corporation that says it's going to start literally, openly tracking where people go 24/7, because of the pandemic, are going to stop doing it when this is finally over?
    More to the point: are we going to put up with that here in the U.S.? Because if they do that here, it'll likely never stop when the pandemic is over, either, and with the way this Dr. Fauci is talking, they'll want to say that it's never over.
    • but the potential benefits are so vast that I really wish we could figure out a way to do it safely. Maybe there is one.

      For the record, your government tracks a lot of crap already. Remember filling out your selective service card when you were 18? How about the Census? Did you vote? Have a driver's license? Gun permit? Do you Fish? Hunt? Own a home?

      Oh, and your credit card company knows everywhere you use it and they have a pretty good idea what you used it for. That information's just a subpoena a
      • There are things you can't avoid unless you want to be Ted Kaczynski and live entirely off the grid and we all put up with those.
        But I use cash for everything I pay for in person. I can't avoid (yet) using a credit card to buy things online.
        But I do not own a smartphone, and I literally dismantled the $40 plastic dumbphone I have, found the GPS antenna (which is literally a surface-mount component, how insane is that?) and shorted it to ground, so it can't transmit GPS location data. I also either don't h

  • Relying on Google, Apple? (Score:3)

    by feranick ( 858651 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @08:47PM (#59923712)
    I know this is hugely controversial. However: GIven the deep penetration of Google+Apple in phones, a modification to their Maps apps would do the trick. They arguably have the best tech in place for this (as they used the same algorithms to track restaurant busy times), it just needs to be connected to the database for COVID19. Again, I know it's controversial, but look at the current approach (government doing it by themselves): Good luck enforcing and establishing a market penetration sufficiently high to be useful. Good luck making an app that doesn't suck, scales properly and uses the right combination of algorithms. It's not that I don't trust the government, but I know how the government in many countries works (certainly Italy, where I am from). I would personally sacrifice privacy but know that the app is reliable, than have some homegrown app that is in used by 5% the population that when it works doesn't guarantee I am safe from the 95% that don't care about using it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      South Korea already has a proven app, I believe it even supports English already and I'm sure wouldn't be hard to translate to Italian.

      They can ask Apple and Google to push it to everyone's phones. They can do that, Apple force-installed that U2 album once and Google has that capability via Play. They could also look at making it a legal requirement to have it in order to go out, but that might be an issue as not everyone has a smartphone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fintux ( 798480 )

      I completely agree with you. We are living in an exceptional time, and it calls for exceptional measures. I'll happily trade a portion of my privacy for better management of the spread of the virus, provided that it will be limited in time. (Actually if the app provides enough anonymity and doesn't suck the battery of the phone dry, I would probably like to keep it going for influenza or any other such disease as well).

      I live in Finland, but I've lived in Italy as well, and while there are many differences,

  • We said: Oh no!
    All the totalitarian psychos said: A chance!

  • I just don’t trust my government that much. They have a poor track record of keeping my personal data secure.

  • Where are the five eyes? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @10:30PM (#59923920)
    Don't the five eyes, i.e. Australia's, Canada's, New Zealand's, UK's, & USA's signals intelligence agencies, already have all this data & more on everybody in the world who has a smartphone? Isn't their supposed primary function national security? Couldn't they possibly lend a hand in the global COVID-19 pandemic, you know, to serve and protect their national interests?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The NSA, GCHQ and five eyes did nothing to warn their 5 govs and health experts over the spread of wuflu in Communist China.
      All the spying budgets and the West got nothing out of Communist China.
      Not a hint to keep masks, to stop exporting masks. To get ventilators ready. To get medical staff in NATO nations ready.
      That Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea got ready... that finally even Russia was getting ready...
      To locally produce masks, to get ready. Stop the private and big brand exports of vital med

      • 5 eye experts did nothing. Why? Even Taiwan was getting ready in the open.

        No way, dude! They sat on this data for as long as it took for those in power to transition high risk stock to low risk. They are not in it for the average schmuck. That is their purpose, afterall.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          So 5 eye experts knew in November but did not tell the US, UK, NZ... Canada..
          When did the mil experts in France, Germany, Italy, Spain finally work out what was on the way from Communist China?
          Yet they all did nothing for their own govs.
          Their own govs and brands kept on exporting vital PPE for weeks and weeks.
          The police in France got no support. Heath experts around the EU go no support.
          NATO did nothing to get ready.
          The EU and WHO experts kept tourism going to invite more wuflu deep into more EU na
      • So were the Epidemiologists. We were warned about this particular pandemic in November 2019. Both groups were ignored because preparing for one would be expensive, low profit and the Trump administration thought it would hurt their poll numbers.

        Also, can you please stop calling it Wuflu? I have Vietnamese friends who are afraid to go outdoors not because of COVID-19 but because of threats. I know trolling is fun and all, but you're gonna get people hurt or killed.
        • Wuhan Virus. Standard nomenclature prior to this one. Why don't the Africans get mad and riot when people refer to Ebola and West Nile? Why don't the people of Lyme, Connecticut get out their pitchforks when someone gets a tick bite and contracts Lyme Disease? And if your Vietnamese friends are getting threats, changing the name won't mean a thing--everyone knows it started in China, and the threatening idiots won't care what it's called. Especially if they can mix up Vietnam and China--they're stupid, won'
        • Citation for "Trump admin thought it would hurt their poll numbers". Sounds like just another case of Orange Man Bad. Maybe listen to him live, and unfiltered from the media? If you do, you'll find out that most stories are misdirection or out-and-out lies.

        • You are repeating lies.

          No, the US intelligence community was NOT making reports in November 2019 that the Wuhan virus was a pandemic. The Chinese didn't have their first case until November 17th. Are you trying to claim that the US knew about a epidemic in China before the Chinese did?

          Of course, since the very people who would have been responsible for publishing such a report as you claim existed in November has gone public to state that there was never any such report, I know that you will never repeat

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Re "The Chinese didn't have their first case until November 17th."... Recall the timeline..
            A "first case" report from a Communist gov? That sent police after its own experts to stop them talking about wuflu?
            That "first case" report that was approved by the police and Communist gov... officially?
            So the NSA, GCHQ, MI6, CIA had no idea from November into December... into January. Officially as the Communist gov "said" so?
            Even different medical experts in Communist China knew in a lot more by December.
  • Some countries are exploring this but on a voluntary basis. I'd personally throw my phone down the river before installing such an app.
    • You might rather throw your smartphone away, but would you rather stay stuck in eternal lock down? Because that's the real choice. If you can't stop the epidemic from peaking up again there can be no end to lock down any time soon.
  • If we accept that this is an important tool for resolving this infection, what gets included next? HIV? Hepatitis? The flu? Heritable diseases? ... Political opinions?
  • ...if the data is kept on my phone and only audited when "the emergency" emerges.
  • I'm sorry Wojciech, I just don't think the WHO is capable of, or interested in, protecting anyone's privacy. I sure don't trust it to be, or to be capable of coordinating such measures.
  • I do not see how this can be useful in cities. Out doorman got coronavirus so everybody in the building that was going in/out over that last week should be quarantined? This is 420 apartments. A nurse or a doctor takes subway to work and gets infected (and they do get infected). That would mark hundreds of people who were in close proximity to him/her for isolation. Most of people that still going to work in large cities will have to be quarantined if you follow this tracing. That includes essential workers

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