The correct way to look at this technical capability is not as a magic surveillance solution that replaces the hard work of contact tracing, but an additional tool, *already deployed at scale internationally*, that we can put in the hands of epidemiologists and doctors
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In particular, phone based contact tracing can retroactively answer vital questions like "did anyone who attended this party that was a spreading event then fly to another city? Where did they go while infectious?" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/coronavirus-westport-connecticut-party-zero.html …
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It doesn't matter that your phone doesn't give pinpoint location data. The rough location data may already be enough to help investigators cut the possible number of contacts from tens of thousands to hundreds. And that is the kind of capability we need as we move to containment
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Note that *in particular* this implies that measures that just do contact tracing, while trying to keep location ambiguous or undetermined, are not sufficient. We need the maximum resolution data these devices are already broadcasting to advertisers, platform owners, the GRU, etc
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The more general problem with privacy advocates' arguments against technical measures is that they are not being made in good faith. They have a desired conclusion ("this doesn't even work!") based on their policy preferences, and they fit their thinking to meet it.
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I'd be very curious to hear from people in the epidemiological world whether a data stream that let them track long-distance travel by infected people, and generate a list of potential contacts based on even rough proximity data, would be useful in containing this disease
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There are all sorts of privacy arguments you can make for why we shouldn't do this kind of contact tracing. I'll fight you, but they're strong arguments! The technical arguments, however, are weaksauce. Anything that helps prune a list of potential contacts is better than nothing
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A final point needs emphasis. The debate isn't how we use these technologies right now. There is no point to doing that until we've reached a state like Taiwan or South Korea, where it's back to tracking individual cases, and want to reopen the economy and resume normalish life
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The upshot is this: for the first time in human history, we have a working, automated real-time and retroactive location tracking tool for something like 80% of the US population. Do we make it part of our pandemic response, or strictly limit it to data brokers and advertisers?
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You think 80% of the population is poor?
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