Hello.
Sorry, I also have a real life and sometimes need to sleep a lot between classes and choir rehearsals… It’s pretty difficult to find en. sources related to web and papers french articles that I have read since april… Quick response below.
Somes links (fr.):
vulnerability :
https://www.developpez.com/actu/308548/Covid-19-une-enorme-faille-decouverte-dans-l-API-de-contact-tracing-concue-par-Apple-et-Google-qui-permettrait-de-suivre-une-personne-a-la-trace/
https://www.laquadrature.net/2020/04/29/que-penser-du-protocole-de-tracage-des-gafam/ (29.04)
Canard Enchaîné n°5195, 3 juin:
Short translation (DeppLT):
Numeric specialists call it a cat flap […] This “captcha” system […] retrieves the IP address.
“This means that gg knows -potentially- the identity of all the cell phones using the StopCovid application” (Arthur Messaud, La Quadrature du Net)
And so on…
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Tech and en. deep analysis:
https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/399.pdf (en.)
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Then I claim a ‘trial of intentions’: ggle and pple are not philanthropists. Their primary goal is profit, the means is the sale of fine, sorted and compiled personal data.
The API is autonomous, integrated in the lower layers, and can be modified by simple OTA update without asking for authorization: apart from our voluntary belief in their leniency, there is no guarantee that this system will not be used soon to increase the efficiency of personal and especially inter-personal tracking.
All that is then required is a unilateral law (e.g., the Patriot Act) for a well-intentioned or ill-intentioned State to be given the keys to all or part of this database, according to criteria beyond its control.
The precedents in terms of censorship and respect of rights, by the GAFAM, do not give me any confidence in their “declarations of honor”.
Short, their preoccupation with privacy is just a display, a communication operation, since they already have the tools to reduce it to nothing, and develop it further by pushing it deeper and deeper into the network as a whole. The Covid crisis is a good pretext to increase their situation of duopoly and to reduce even more the possibilities to escape their surveillance…
Last, I don’t trust in evil nor god. I’m still suspicious of the business means. Goals are well known and the disastrous consequences too.