Re: COVID-19 contacts tracker (Re: a brief pondering)

[John Wroclawski <[e-mail]>]

> On Apr 15, 2020, at 12:42 PM, Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 4/15/20 12:07 PM, Benoit Claise wrote:
>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> Which leads me to a question: what can this community (and similar/adjacent ones) do productively together to help? What new things are happening on the network from which we can learn and quickly adapt/improve?
>>> 
>> In my wish list, I would see this community helping with a COVID-19 contacts tracker:
>>     - with clear specifications
>>     - that respects the privacy concerns, for all parties
> 
> I don't think it's possible.  Anything that can be used to trace contacts for medical purposes can be used to trace contacts for political purposes.
> Keith

I imagine many people here are aware of efforts such as PACT

https://pact.mit.edu/
https://pact.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/The-PACT-protocol-specification-ver-0.1.pdf

and the quite similar Apple-Google proposal:

Privacy Safe Contact Tracing using Bluetooth Low Energy
https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contact_Tracing_Using_BLE.pdf

(More, with links to preliminary technical specs, at:
https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/apple-and-google-partner-covid-19-contact-tracing-technology )

I think the existence of these things, and the speed they’re moving at, pretty much validates Carsten’s observation that:

> On Apr 15, 2020, at 12:25 PM, Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:
> (1) We are not fast enough.  (Some of us are, but as an organization we aren’t.)

but also, it’s interesting to see how these ideas address “privacy preserving”, what the model they’ve adopted is, and how they might at least try to address Keith’s point.

cheers, -john