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To Slow Coronavirus Spread, Singapore Creates a Contact-Tracing App (zdnet.com) 39

Posted by EditorDavid from the linked-in dept.
ZDNet reports that Singapore is fighting the coronavirus with a new smartphone app named "TraceTogether". The app is able to estimate the distance between TraceTogether smartphones as well as the duration of such interactions. The data then is captured, encrypted, and stored locally on the user's phone for 21 days, which spans the incubation period of the virus. When needed in contact tracing, users will have to authorise the uploading of their TraceTogether data to Singapore's Ministry of Health, which then will assess the information and retrieve the mobile numbers of close contacts within that period of time.

Developed by Government Technology Agency (GovTech), alongside the health ministry, the app was designed to help speed up the contact tracing process and stem the spread of COVID-19, the government IT office said. GovTech said the current processed depended heavily on the memory of patients, who might not be ale to remember all close contacts or have the contact details and information of these individuals. The mobile app can plug the gaps and more quickly identify potential carriers, who then can monitor their health and take the necessary action sooner...

Data logs were stored locally on the mobile phone and contained only cryptographically generated temporary IDs. The data logs would be extracted only when needed by the authorities for contact tracing, it said.
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To Slow Coronavirus Spread, Singapore Creates a Contact-Tracing App More

To Slow Coronavirus Spread, Singapore Creates a Contact-Tracing App

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  • Their whole business model is automating guilt-by-association.

    Though, they are hardly the only ones. I hope there a good plans to sunset this after the crisis is over.

    Everything's becoming Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon, and not in a good way. [youtube.com]

  • I wonder if Google / Apple / Facebook etc. could actually combine and get that data together faster and more accurately globally.
    • This seems at least to have some voluntary element to it though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Wait for the usual questions on that in the West.
      But privacy.
      But human rights.
      The homeless.
      The illegal migrants.

      But who will it find and report in the community..
      Will health, tax, unemployment payments, work, telco, ISP, city, state, federal immigration, academic, tourism, hotel, private sector, utility and other data sets be shared... so names, address and moments sort out for health testing..

      Asian nations get on with testing for wuflu and tracking everyone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Those are all still legitimate concerns. Not in Asia, because communism/socialism doesn't care about the individual. But those who prefer security over freedom deserve neither.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Re 'Those are all still legitimate concerns"..
          Most nations just want to track down every sick person and person who had days and weeks of contact with a sick person.
          The sick and the people who had contact with the sick can then be isolated and tested as needed so they dont spread wuflu.
          Nations used their hotel, immigration data, tourism data, all data on their own citizens to quickly track people found to be around wuflu.

          While the UN, WHO and West did nothing but stay open to tourists, students, thei

          • It's almost like openness and civil liberty, in addition to being a civilizational achievement and a great strength of Western society, also come with their own set of challenges...

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by AHuxley ( 892839 )
              The only "set of challenges" was not to stay open to tourism, students and illegal migration for a while. After decades.
              Wuflu could have been slowed down a bit more all over the EU.
              Find the sick, test them, stop them spreading.
              Re "openness and civil liberty" would have been fine as it was non citizens who got told they could not enter for a while...
        • But those who prefer security over freedom deserve neither.

          Safety! Not security.
          For security you just need to be ace at mathematics.
          Or use the programs from those who are...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The question for the West, why where emergency services so crippled by tax cuts for the richest, to the point where they could no longer handle any major infection, a system broken on purpose by sheer insatiable greed by the very richest, the psychopathic 1%. All this chaos is because they purposefully crippled emergency services and now the masses losses, privatise the profits and socialise the losses including mass death.

        BUT BULLSHIT.

    • For Apple at least, it wouldn't retain any info about other phones nearby.

      I could maybe see something like this working as an app that could be distributed on iOS if each app worked as a bluetooth beacon other apps would be looking for.

      Then people would just have to grant bluetooth permissions.

  • We talk, they do (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kaeleku ( 540168 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @05:12PM (#59857680)
    This is another classic. There was literally just a thread 1 or days ago where some American guy was like "hey guys, what do you think of this great idea" and the general response was "pshaw, never work." "HIPAA." "Freeeeedumb!" Meanwhile, Singapore developed the app and rolled it out. America. Can't screen. Can't test. Can't contact trace. Can't source supplies. Can't quarantine. The country of can't. The country of brands, propaganda and PR. We can't do anything, but we can convince you of anything

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Well, Singapore is a country where well, you have no rights.

      Disagree with the government? Well, either keep it to yourself or leave, because if they find out, you're jailed on "national security" issues.

      It's basically China but worse.

      So yes, they can do because if you don't, you're thrown in jail. You don't consent to tracking? Too bad, it's either be tracked or put in a place where we know where you are 24/7. And nothing's out of the question - visitation? lawyers? Not allowed, again, social distancing. No

    • Singapore's app is very different and solves a completely different problem.

      The guy's idea was a central DB of test results so your employer could confirm you are ok to work. Singapore's app is about tracking mobile phones you were near over last 21 days so they can do contact tracing.

      A primary reason people objected was because a piece of paper would work just as well or better than the central db.

  • Wow, strange times (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    All of the soapbox spiels have suddenly changed from "think of the children" to "think of the virus" causing citizen rights and privacy considerations to be whitewashed the world over. Social distancing. Personal confinement. No sizable gatherings in public. No unauthorized movement between countries - and now even states and counties. All these things were the dreams of police states not so long ago, now the public is allowing to happen out of virus fears. And all this down the toilet for a virus that sti

  • [Generic story about Orwellian privacy violations spun to be "good advanced technology" because Coronavirus]

    These stories are great for Trump bashing. Just choose from the following options:

    1. Is Trump not doing what's in the story?
    OMG HE DOESN'T CARE AND WANTS PEOPLE TO DIE! This just shows how dumb and out of it Trump is. Clearly Bernie -- oh wait fuck his campaign is deader than an 90 year old emphysema patient with Coronavirus -- I mean JOE BIDEN is clearly a tech genius who would have personally impl

  • Like THAT won't be used against citizens.

  • This is what responsible governments should do, slow the virus, try to contain it, to save the lives of their people.

    Irresponsible governments make up excuse to do nothing and try to shift the blame instead.

  • Its Been Done Before Already (Score:4, Informative)

    by ClassicASP ( 1791116 ) on Saturday March 21, 2020 @10:35PM (#59858328)
    Dr Hannah Fry did a documentary featuring an app like this already back in 2018. It was called "Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic". They could have been using this app months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • People who need to move around could have more flexibility if there was better traceability. Logging your movements offline would be best. Then anonymous sharing when you know have virus or high risk symptoms. Unfortunately fake posters would abuse. So anonymous unlikely but offline or secure tracking could be useful. Like others concern a moral hazard for overreach abuse.

  • Trade off (Score:3)

    by lorinc ( 2470890 ) on Sunday March 22, 2020 @02:34AM (#59858608) Homepage Journal

    I know it is essential to fight the pandemic the best we can, and I'm all for reducing the number of death as much as possible by all possible means. But, each day that passes makes our world look more and more like one of those nightmare novels by Philip K Dick. I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in that world.

  • The real deadly contagion will be authoritarianism. COVID19 is just another catalyst.

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