Apple, Google to Turn Smartphones Into Coronavirus Tracking Devices
11 April 2020 - 5:07AM
Dow Jones News
By Tripp Mickle and Rob Copeland
SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple Inc. and Google will build software
together that would alert people if they were in contact with
someone infected with the coronavirus, an unprecedented
collaboration between two Silicon Valley giants and rivals.
The project, which is certain to raise privacy concerns, offers
the most concrete technological solution to date for governmental
authorities searching for ways to lift, at least partially,
lockdown orders that have swept across the nation. The companies
are by far the world's biggest smartphone software providers, with
billions of users worldwide.
The companies said jointly Friday that the contact tracing tools
would be built into smartphones, using existing Bluetooth
technology that tracks whether phones have passed within a certain
distance of one another. If a user tests positive for the
coronavirus, the phone might search through the past 14 days of
location data to identify other individuals who passed close enough
for potential exposure.
Those unknowing individuals would then receive a notification on
their phones, according to draft documents released by the
companies, such as, "ALERT: You have recently been exposed to
someone who has tested positive for Covid-19. Tap for more
information."
The first versions of the software will be available next
month.
The concept, used most prominently in Singapore earlier this
year, could make it easier to contain future outbreaks as people
return to daily life. Many experts believe such a technological
solution will be necessary before isolation measures can be fully
removed.
To work in the U.S., it would require clearing two major
hurdles: Users would have to volunteer to input personal health
information into an app, and public health authorities would need
to make testing more widespread.
Apple and Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., said privacy and
security would be central to the design. In a rare move, they
published publicly some of the proposed code that would be used to
build the software, making it available for researchers to analyze.
The code shows, among other things, that all user data is deleted
if an individual decides later to delete the app, and that any
connections to the companies' advertising operations are
disabled.
"There has never been a more important moment to work together
to solve one of the world's most pressing problems," the companies
said in a joint statement.
The project represents a detente, for now, between two fierce
rivals. It addresses what many technology and health officials have
considered an indomitable obstacle: gaining adoption across
different smartphone ecosystems that don't typically work
together.
"These guys have resisted doing something like this because they
didn't want to expose how creepy their devices are, but they feel
they need to be proactive before someone like the government forces
something on them, " said Talal Shamoon, chief executive of
Intertrust Technologies Corp., a data-rights-management company.
"The question is: Who's the trusted third-party that will collect
and track the data?"
Representatives for Apple and Google didn't respond to requests
for comment.
--Sam Schechner contributed to this article.
Write to Tripp Mickle at Tripp.Mickle@wsj.com and Rob Copeland
at rob.copeland@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 10, 2020 14:52 ET (18:52 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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