But there has been real, high quality progress on handling data in ways that are mathematically designed to conserve privacy and limit surveillance to a specific, socially constructive purpose.
The Google-Apple method is one of those. However, there is a lot of good work being done that is more advanced than that, which alas is not available right now but will be useful in future.
It parallels the high quality progress we have seen in areas like encryption, and in cryptocurrencies.
I think it's completely right to have doubts. E.g. in another of my commments I wrote that I don't trust the UK government's current approach.
But we are, slowly, also building tools to make fascism more difficult as well. If we can persuade the powers that be to use them, and verify that they are.
It may be that if we don't make "good" contact-tracing tools available, someone will make worse contact-tracing tools and force people to use them, on grounds of necessity. It looks like that's already happening, with some countries adopting a central database approach, some countries making it the law to use them (e.g. India), and other countries using newer privacy-oriented contact-tracing approaches.
But there has been real, high quality progress on handling data in ways that are mathematically designed to conserve privacy and limit surveillance to a specific, socially constructive purpose.
The Google-Apple method is one of those. However, there is a lot of good work being done that is more advanced than that, which alas is not available right now but will be useful in future.
It parallels the high quality progress we have seen in areas like encryption, and in cryptocurrencies.
I think it's completely right to have doubts. E.g. in another of my commments I wrote that I don't trust the UK government's current approach.
But we are, slowly, also building tools to make fascism more difficult as well. If we can persuade the powers that be to use them, and verify that they are.
It may be that if we don't make "good" contact-tracing tools available, someone will make worse contact-tracing tools and force people to use them, on grounds of necessity. It looks like that's already happening, with some countries adopting a central database approach, some countries making it the law to use them (e.g. India), and other countries using newer privacy-oriented contact-tracing approaches.