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Ali Alkhatib: We Need to Talk About Digital Contact Tracing

ali-alkhatib.com · 3,945 words · saved by 1 readers

Over the past few weeks, Apple & Google have floated the idea of developing and distributing a digital contact-tracing app that will inform people when they’ve been exposed to someone who’s contracted COVID-19, and communicate to people that they’ve been exposed to you if you later test positive yourself (edit: since writing this, Apple has released a beta of iOS 13 that includes the SDK necessary to begin using this system). Writing this in late April and early May, it feels like we’re desperate for information and weary from not knowing who’s caught COVID-19, who’s still vulnerable, who gets it worse or why, or even how to treat it. We’re desperate for any information we can get our hands on. This proposal by Apple and Google promises to give us some information that we can finally start to work off of. This isn’t going to work, and we need to stop this plan before it gets off the ground. I’ll explain why in this post.

Over the past few weeks, Apple & Google have floated the idea of developing and distributing a digital contact-tracing app that will inform people when they’ve been exposed to someone who’s contracted COVID-19, and communicate to people that they’ve been exposed to you if you later test positive yourself (edit: since writing this, Apple has released a beta of iOS 13 that includes the SDK necessary to begin using this system). Writing this in late April and early May, it feels like we’re desperate for information and weary from not knowing who’s caught COVID-19, who’s still vulnerable, who gets

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