Do we need to start testing this? It is coming anyway, and when governments make their choice and it becomes available people will start asking for Apps like this.
https://www.pepp-pt.org/
Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services
If we have to use such a app, i will use my phone only in flight mode or a old mobile phone (no smartphone)
Is installing such apps compulsory?
What do you mean with “Do we need to start testing this” and “people will start asking for Apps like this”?
I might be oversimplifying, but it will be just another app and /e/ is just another Android ROM. So I’m pretty sure people who want to install it will be able to do so just fine.
Or do you want to discuss if /e/ should block it from its app store because of privacy concerns?
Or do you want to start a privacy-respecting app yourself because you don’t trust other companies when they implement such an app?
After a brief hunt for information about the possible use of such a tracing app after the lifting of lockdown measures, I found only a mention that here in France a task force set up to advise the government has begun to start studying the possibility.
The article from Le Monde Informatique is in French and dates from April 7, so just before Macron announced the tentative date of May 11 for lifting certain lockdown measures.
The author of the article seems to doubt the willingness of the government to adopt the DP3T proposal as it already relies on information collected by phone operator companies using geo-localisation to follow the movements of French smartphone users. They have already discovered that nearly 20% of Parisians left the city just before the lockdown came into effect.
This information is of little use to epidemiologists trying to follow the spread of covid-19 but an app like the pepp-pt using bluetooth would be more useful for modelling of a possible spread of contagion.
According to the article a proposed amendment to legalise the collection of data from smartphones was initially rejected by the government but with the urgency of the need to provide reassurance to the public following the lifting of the lockdown it seems that some form of tracing app may be reconsidered.
If using G00gl Android or Apple iPhone it will be installed automated with an update. Worldwide. If the use is mandatory or free choice depends on the government of your country.
Everything depends on what the government of the country we live in decides. In my country it is only known for now a contact tracing app “will play a role” in softening the social distancing and lock-down rules, so probably it will be the choice between remaining at home alone without the app or have a little more freedom to move around with the app on your phone. Isn’t keeping Bluetooth on at all times a security risk?
This article in the American Slate magazine has a very negative opinion of the PEPP-PT app under development for contact tracing during the current coronavirus pandemic. It appears to be a problem with Apple - legitimately, it seems to me - resisting the call of European governments who want to upload ID information concerning app users. While it is supposedly anonymised the user ID can be checked on a centralized database and this is what makes it questionable. Our governments seem to be desperately searching for ways of localizing new outbreaks of contagion but one wonders if this is going to be the best way.
Read the article here:
https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/europe-contact-tracing-privacy-apple-google-coronavirus.html
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