By Tripp Mickle, Rob Copeland and Sam Schechner
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 some privacy concerns,
offers the most concrete technological solution to date for
governmental authorities searching for ways to at least partially
lift the lockdown orders that have swept the nation. The companies
are by far the world's biggest smartphone software providers, with
billions of users world-wide.
The companies said jointly Friday that the "contact tracing
tools" they are developing 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 and chooses to participate in the
system, other phones will be able to search through their location
data to determine whether they passed close enough for long enough
to risk a potential exposure within the past 14 days.
Those unknowing individuals -- provided they, too, have opted in
-- would receive a notification on their own phones, according to
draft documents posted by the companies, such as, "ALERT: You have
recently been exposed to someone who has tested positive for
Covid-19. Tap for more information."
Apple and Google will release next month the first versions of
software for the alert apps, which could be developed by
public-health authorities, among others.
The private effort wasn't coordinated in advance with the White
House task force that is looking at potential tech solutions to
curb the spread of the virus, according to a person familiar with
the matter. President Trump said Friday that the technology raised
some privacy concerns, telling reporters: "It's very interesting
but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person's freedom.
We're going to take a look at that, a very strong look at it."
The initiative would turn the smartphones in Americans' pockets
into pandemic tracking devices. The concept, similar to that 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.
Apple and Google's announcement comes as a patchwork of
academics and tech companies in Europe and the U.S., including at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have been developing
similar technologies and apps to alert people of potential
infections. Promoters say the tools could allow many people to go
back to work and school, while encouraging only those people who
have been exposed to shelter in place.
But debate remains over whether voluntary apps would be adopted
widely enough to provide much public-health benefit -- something
other efforts have struggled with. The involvement of Apple and
Alphabet Inc.'s Google, which together account for the operating
systems in almost all smartphones, could address that concern.
"Contact tracing is very resource intensive, and anything that
could help us do that would be very valuable," said Caitlin Rivers,
an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
"But you'd need widespread adoption for that to scale."
Concerns have also revolved around whether the benefits of such
a system would outweigh the potential exposure of sensitive
information about where and with whom people spend time. Apple and
Google said information about the other people users come into
contact with wouldn't be shared unless a user volunteers it. They
also said users' locations and personally identifiable information
won't be collected. The companies began collaborating in late
March, an Apple spokesman said.
Some privacy advocates praised Apple and Google's system because
it is decentralized, rather than one in which all data is uploaded
to central servers where it could be misused. In Apple's and
Google's models, individual phones would determine independently
whether they they'd spent time near devices of infected people --
and only then would potentially infected people be prompted to
identify themselves to health authorities for testing.
"This is a very effective power play in favor of privacy by
Apple and Google," said Michael Veale, an assistant professor of
digital rights and regulation at University College London. "They
have made a very conscious decision against very centralized
databases, while still giving epidemiologists the data they
need."
To work in the U.S., the system 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 said privacy and security would be central to
the design. In a rare move, they published some of the proposed
code behind the software so researchers can analyze it. 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?"
To be effective, health authorities and government officials
would need to know that people are within a few feet of one
another. GPS is too blunt an instrument to make such minute
detections, but Bluetooth is more precise because it is based on
proximity technology and has a range of about 30 feet.
It isn't clear whether the app's reliance on phone sensors risks
triggering false positives, epidemiologists said. A workable app
would need to be able to detect when devices were within about 6
feet for more than 10 or 15 minutes. More fleeting contacts, such
as people one passes on the street, are less likely to lead to
infection, they say.
"It still tends to be close contacts that are the biggest
danger," Johns Hopkins's Ms. Rivers said. "One concern is that
[these technologies] wouldn't be refined enough to be useful.
The array of sensors on phones should provide enough information
to determine when people had significant enough exposure to pose a
risk, Mr. Shamoon said, potentially generating sufficient
information to ease social-distancing measures.
"Any kind of targeted lockdown is better than a wholesale
lockdown," he said.
Apple and Google declined to comment on the potential for false
positives.
Another concern for public-health officials is that apps might
reach only certain populations of people who are more likely to
have smartphones -- and then only those who opt in to the service.
In 2019, Pew Research found that 53% of people 65 and older have a
smartphone in the U.S., compared with 81% of the population as a
whole.
--Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.
Write to Tripp Mickle at Tripp.Mickle@wsj.com, Rob Copeland at
rob.copeland@wsj.com and Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 10, 2020 17:49 ET (21:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jun 2024 to Jul 2024
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jul 2023 to Jul 2024