Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / Posted By Steve Balich
| Will You Use This New COVID-19 Surveillance App? |
Steve Balich Rditor Note: Remember the book Animal Farm by George Orwell
By Jeff Brown, Editor, Exponential Tech Investor
Google and Apple just partnered up on COVID-19 “contact tracing”…
As if the above information wasn’t disturbing enough, I have even more worrying news to share.
As I showed readers of my free daily tech investing newsletter, The Bleeding Edge, Google recently published its “Community Mobility Reports.”
These reports gather GPS (satellite-based) location data from smartphones. The aim is to track how people have been moving around at country, state, and even county levels.
Thanks to the constant stream of personal data they harvest from our smartphones, Google and other Silicon Valley companies already know where we work, live, shop, and entertain ourselves.
They even know what parks we go to.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With contact-tracing technology in place, they’ll also know who we encounter as we go about our daily lives.
New Surveillance App
This trove of data is enabling something called “contact tracing.”
It’s designed to alert you if you have come into contact with a person who has COVID-19.
Apple and Google just announced they are adding an app that uses this technology to iPhones and phones that run Android (Google’s mobile operating system).
And that means pretty much every phone on the market right now. Together, Apple and Google make the operating systems for more than 99% of smartphones.
The two companies will roll out their contact-tracing app as early as next month.
I, for one, will not be downloading it.
You see, through this app, our phones will automatically share information with other phones, using Bluetooth.
That’s right – our phones will connect us to other people’s phones. It will happen automatically. Health authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) will manage this communication system.
And it gets much worse.
Later this year, Google and Apple plan to add this contact-tracing technology directly to their operating systems.
We’ll get a software update on our phones that will automatically install this functionality – no app necessary.
It will be built right into the operating system. You won’t be able to delete it.
Frightening Development
Officially, this is an opt-in system.
But as you know, this type of thing is usually buried within a giant legal agreement that you must consent to if you want to use the product or service.
When it gets built into the operating system, you won’t have much choice in the matter. If you consent to using the operating system, you consent to contact tracing.
Looking at the big picture, more than one-third of the world’s population uses an iPhone or Android smartphone. That means Apple and Google will be contact tracing more than 3 billion people around the globe.
Let’s imagine a worst-case scenario. Let’s say this technology tags you as coming into close contact with somebody infected with COVID-19.
Then, perhaps on your way to the grocery store, a police cruiser intercepts you. Cops “contain” you by force and quarantine you – for the sake of society.
That may be technically legal under emergency pandemic powers. But to me, it sounds an awful lot like detention without due process.
I know the world is eager to stop the spread of COVID-19. So am I. But for those of us who care about our rights and privacy, this is a frightening development.
I’ll repeat here what I told my Bleeding Edge readers.
The ethical questions we face over new technologies are unprecedented. There is no historical example of what we are going to face.
I don’t tell you all this to worry you. As a technologist, I believe tech has always been a force for good. And I believe technology will also solve some of society’s biggest problems in the years ahead.
But make no mistake… we’re at an inflection point. Over the next two decades, society will either become one of abundance for all… or it will descend into chaos.
Time will tell which wins out.
