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The world's first contact-tracing app using Google and Apple's API goes live
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Internetado
May 28, 2020, 3:15:11 PM5/28/20
to
In Switzerland, the SwissCovid app has launched as a pilot to try and
contain the spread of the virus.
The world's first contact-tracing app built on the backbone of the API
jointly developed by Google and Apple has launched as a large-scale
pilot in Switzerland. Dubbed SwissCovid, the tool can now be downloaded
by several thousand users that have been designated as belonging to
"pilot populations", which include the army and some hospital workers.
SwissCovid is designed to quickly track and warn users who have been in
prolonged contact with somebody who has tested positive for the
COVID-19 virus in an effort to control the spread of the disease.
Sign-up is voluntary, and it is expected that the app will be available
to the wider public by mid-June, subject to the Swiss Parliament giving
the tool the green light.
The pilot version of the app is also available to employees of the EPFL
University in Lausanne, and of the ETH University in Zurich, which led
the development of the technology. The two Swiss institutions decided
to build the app on the basis of a model jointly put forward by Apple
and Google last month, which was pitched by the tech giants as the
better way to develop contact-tracing technology that incorporates
privacy by design.
Apple and Google's API follows a decentralized approach, which means
that every operation that might involve privacy is carried out on
users' phones, rather than through a central database. At the heart of
the concept is the imperative to keep data from being stored, and
therefore at risk of being hacked or de-anonymized.
Last week, Apple released iOS 13.5, which includes a new COVID Exposure
Notification feature. This feature enables the API that lets health
officials and developers build contact-tracing technology.
In parallel, EPFL and ETH have been working on their own protocol
called Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP3T).
According to the universities' team, researchers have been in ongoing
talks with Apple and Google to enable compatibility between DP3T and
the tech giants' API. This means that the Swiss DP3T-based app can
switch to Apple and Google's protocol as soon as it becomes widely
available, and integrate easily with iOS and Android devices.
Marcel Salathé, an EPFL associate professor who worked on DP3T, told
ZDNet: "We've been working on DP3T since the beginning of the crisis,
and we based it on a decentralized model largely because of privacy
concerns. A week or so after we went public, Google and Apple announced
their API, and publicly said that it had been heavily inspired by our
protocol," he said.
"For us, therefore, it was a no-brainer. Most of the things we had
proposed with DP3T were in Apple and Google's API, and would be in iOS
and Android. Since then, we have kept working with them to make sure
they understand where we come from."
Scientists in the two Swiss universities have been testing and
fine-tuning DP3T for the past month, with the help of the Swiss Army.
The protocol operates via Bluetooth, continuously broadcasting random
and impossible-to-guess strings of characters between smartphones. All
signals are stored locally, on the devices, for a maximum of 14 days.
If a user tests positive for COVID-19, they can then share the keys
stored on their phone that were picked up on the days that they were
contagious.
The app then finds out which contacts carried risk – those that lasted
more than 15 minutes and took place less than two metres from another
user – and generates a notification indicating the day of exposure to
the risk, and the procedure to follow.
The decentralized principle at the heart of DP3T, and of Apple and
Google's API, is not without shortcomings. Experts have repeatedly
highlighted the technology's lack of reliability. Without a central
organization supervising the alerts, and making sure that only the
users who are at risk are being warned, there is a risk that the app
gets swamped in false positives and turns to complete chaos.
A centralized approach, in addition, would let health services run
analytics on data to better understand how the disease is spreading.
For these reasons, the UK's NHS decided to snub Apple and Google's API,
and instead to release its own centralized protocol.
"I have some sympathy for the idea that you can improve your knowledge
of the outbreak with more data," said Salathé. "That's accurate, but I
don't think we should develop a potentially very intrusive technology
on the back of an epidemiological argument. Let's not use this tool to
find out more about a virus, but let's use it to support regular
contact-tracing."
The scientists behind the Swiss app also argued that the effectiveness
of the tool depends on its widespread adoption by the public; and the
way to achieve trust is to minimize the collection of information.
Carmela Troncoso, who worked on the DP3T protocol at EPFL University,
said: "Our goal is to offer a solution that can be adopted in Europe
and around the world. There are millions of users and we owe it to them
to be transparent."
In a webinar, the creators of SwissCovid further stressed that the
technology was developed so as to secure the trust of the public.
Troncoso said that users can decide to stop using the app and delete it
permanently from their phone at any time.
Building a technology using Apple and Google's API, of course, also
comes with some technical benefits: there are some obvious perks to
creating a tool that is immediately compatible with iOS and Android. In
that respect, the UK's homemade app, which is currently being trialed
on the Isle of Wight, might need some more tweaking: it was reported
that the technology profoundly impacts battery life for users with
older iPhones.
Salathé said: "I assume other countries like the UK will eventually go
down the decentralized route, because compatibility is key. You want to
have a tool that works on users' phones, and Google and Apple control
99.5% of operating systems. I'm a bit puzzled that there is still a
debate."
The road to deployment certainly hasn't been smooth for the NHS app.
From an initial launch date estimated for mid-May, the government has
now admitted that the tool wouldn't be ready until June.
In addition, concerns have been raised that the UK's centralized
approach wouldn't enable interoperability with other European systems,
which tend to favor decentralization – and that this could affect
Britons' ability to travel abroad.
It recently emerged that the UK government has contracted private
company Zuhlke to investigate whether the NHS's contact-tracing app
could be switched over to Apple and Google's API. The £3.9 million
contract's terms involve investigating the "complexity, performance and
feasibility of implementing native Apple and Google contact tracing
APIs within the existing proximity mobile application and platform."
NHSX has not responded to a request for comment.
On the other hand, Apple and Google said last week that 22 countries,
as well as some US states, had requested access to their API.[...]
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worlds-first-contact-tracing-app-using-google-and-apples-api-goes-live/#ftag=RSSbaffb68
--
Eduardo
contain the spread of the virus.
The world's first contact-tracing app built on the backbone of the API
jointly developed by Google and Apple has launched as a large-scale
pilot in Switzerland. Dubbed SwissCovid, the tool can now be downloaded
by several thousand users that have been designated as belonging to
"pilot populations", which include the army and some hospital workers.
SwissCovid is designed to quickly track and warn users who have been in
prolonged contact with somebody who has tested positive for the
COVID-19 virus in an effort to control the spread of the disease.
Sign-up is voluntary, and it is expected that the app will be available
to the wider public by mid-June, subject to the Swiss Parliament giving
the tool the green light.
The pilot version of the app is also available to employees of the EPFL
University in Lausanne, and of the ETH University in Zurich, which led
the development of the technology. The two Swiss institutions decided
to build the app on the basis of a model jointly put forward by Apple
and Google last month, which was pitched by the tech giants as the
better way to develop contact-tracing technology that incorporates
privacy by design.
Apple and Google's API follows a decentralized approach, which means
that every operation that might involve privacy is carried out on
users' phones, rather than through a central database. At the heart of
the concept is the imperative to keep data from being stored, and
therefore at risk of being hacked or de-anonymized.
Last week, Apple released iOS 13.5, which includes a new COVID Exposure
Notification feature. This feature enables the API that lets health
officials and developers build contact-tracing technology.
In parallel, EPFL and ETH have been working on their own protocol
called Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP3T).
According to the universities' team, researchers have been in ongoing
talks with Apple and Google to enable compatibility between DP3T and
the tech giants' API. This means that the Swiss DP3T-based app can
switch to Apple and Google's protocol as soon as it becomes widely
available, and integrate easily with iOS and Android devices.
Marcel Salathé, an EPFL associate professor who worked on DP3T, told
ZDNet: "We've been working on DP3T since the beginning of the crisis,
and we based it on a decentralized model largely because of privacy
concerns. A week or so after we went public, Google and Apple announced
their API, and publicly said that it had been heavily inspired by our
protocol," he said.
"For us, therefore, it was a no-brainer. Most of the things we had
proposed with DP3T were in Apple and Google's API, and would be in iOS
and Android. Since then, we have kept working with them to make sure
they understand where we come from."
Scientists in the two Swiss universities have been testing and
fine-tuning DP3T for the past month, with the help of the Swiss Army.
The protocol operates via Bluetooth, continuously broadcasting random
and impossible-to-guess strings of characters between smartphones. All
signals are stored locally, on the devices, for a maximum of 14 days.
If a user tests positive for COVID-19, they can then share the keys
stored on their phone that were picked up on the days that they were
contagious.
The app then finds out which contacts carried risk – those that lasted
more than 15 minutes and took place less than two metres from another
user – and generates a notification indicating the day of exposure to
the risk, and the procedure to follow.
The decentralized principle at the heart of DP3T, and of Apple and
Google's API, is not without shortcomings. Experts have repeatedly
highlighted the technology's lack of reliability. Without a central
organization supervising the alerts, and making sure that only the
users who are at risk are being warned, there is a risk that the app
gets swamped in false positives and turns to complete chaos.
A centralized approach, in addition, would let health services run
analytics on data to better understand how the disease is spreading.
For these reasons, the UK's NHS decided to snub Apple and Google's API,
and instead to release its own centralized protocol.
"I have some sympathy for the idea that you can improve your knowledge
of the outbreak with more data," said Salathé. "That's accurate, but I
don't think we should develop a potentially very intrusive technology
on the back of an epidemiological argument. Let's not use this tool to
find out more about a virus, but let's use it to support regular
contact-tracing."
The scientists behind the Swiss app also argued that the effectiveness
of the tool depends on its widespread adoption by the public; and the
way to achieve trust is to minimize the collection of information.
Carmela Troncoso, who worked on the DP3T protocol at EPFL University,
said: "Our goal is to offer a solution that can be adopted in Europe
and around the world. There are millions of users and we owe it to them
to be transparent."
In a webinar, the creators of SwissCovid further stressed that the
technology was developed so as to secure the trust of the public.
Troncoso said that users can decide to stop using the app and delete it
permanently from their phone at any time.
Building a technology using Apple and Google's API, of course, also
comes with some technical benefits: there are some obvious perks to
creating a tool that is immediately compatible with iOS and Android. In
that respect, the UK's homemade app, which is currently being trialed
on the Isle of Wight, might need some more tweaking: it was reported
that the technology profoundly impacts battery life for users with
older iPhones.
Salathé said: "I assume other countries like the UK will eventually go
down the decentralized route, because compatibility is key. You want to
have a tool that works on users' phones, and Google and Apple control
99.5% of operating systems. I'm a bit puzzled that there is still a
debate."
The road to deployment certainly hasn't been smooth for the NHS app.
From an initial launch date estimated for mid-May, the government has
now admitted that the tool wouldn't be ready until June.
In addition, concerns have been raised that the UK's centralized
approach wouldn't enable interoperability with other European systems,
which tend to favor decentralization – and that this could affect
Britons' ability to travel abroad.
It recently emerged that the UK government has contracted private
company Zuhlke to investigate whether the NHS's contact-tracing app
could be switched over to Apple and Google's API. The £3.9 million
contract's terms involve investigating the "complexity, performance and
feasibility of implementing native Apple and Google contact tracing
APIs within the existing proximity mobile application and platform."
NHSX has not responded to a request for comment.
On the other hand, Apple and Google said last week that 22 countries,
as well as some US states, had requested access to their API.[...]
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worlds-first-contact-tracing-app-using-google-and-apples-api-goes-live/#ftag=RSSbaffb68
--
Eduardo
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