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We've been hearing a lot lately about how we need to know who's sick and who might have been exposed to the coronavirus if we ever want to get back to something like normal life. Some people in public health and in Silicon Valley think our smartphones can help. For this week's All Tech Considered, NPR's Shannon Bond has more. And we should note Apple and Google are both NPR sponsors.
SHANNON BOND, BYLINE: Lifting the lockdowns means testing a lot more people for the coronavirus, and you're going to hear this phrase more - contact tracing. That's what public health officials used to track who patients have interacted with and make sure those people get tested or go into quarantine. Dr. Louise Ivers of Massachusetts General Hospital says this is usually done by asking each patient a bunch of questions.
LOUISE IVERS: Who did you spend your time with over the last two weeks? Who did you spend more than 10 minutes with? Were you six feet apart? Were you closer than six feet?
BOND: But that takes a lot of time and effort, so here's how smartphones could help if we're willing to let them track us. Imagine two people sitting near each other in the park. Call them Alice and Bob. They both have smartphones that are sending out Bluetooth signals.
DANIEL WEITZNER: That technology is able to send out anonymous little chirps, little messages that other phones can listen to.
BOND: Daniel Weitzner is a research scientist at MIT who's been working on a project using this Bluetooth technology. Now Apple and Google are teaming up to do the same thing. The idea is this. Alice and Bob's phones have a list of the Bluetooth signals they've received. If Bob comes down with COVID-19, he can mark himself as infected in an app from his public health department. The system uses the record of those anonymous Bluetooth signals to warn anyone whose phone has come near his in the last two weeks - people like Alice. Dr. Ivers says using smartphones this way would not replace traditional contact tracing but could give it a boost.
IVERS: This approach can both expand the reach because you may not remember who you were on the bus with or you may not have known those people.
BOND: It could also free up public health officials to focus on people who don't have smartphones or who are particularly vulnerable. It's not a failsafe. Bluetooth signals reach further than the six feet we're told to stay apart, and for the system to be effective, a lot of people need to participate.
WEITZNER: We need the network effect of everyone being able to hear all of these chirps.
BOND: Which is why Apple and Google, normally big rivals, are working together. About 3 billion people around the world have either an iPhone or Android, so if a lot of them opt in, this could really make a difference. But convincing people to trust the tech giants with what is, after all, a form of surveillance is a challenge. Weitzner says these Bluetooth messages do not reveal who sent them or from where.
WEITZNER: We don't need to know where you were close to someone, just that you were close to someone.
BOND: Apple and Google are putting pretty strict limits on their system. Only public health agencies can use it, and the government can't force people to turn on tracking. The Bluetooth signals, those random numbers - they stay on your phone. That means not even Apple or Google can trace where you've been. But people are already asking if we're giving up too much about ourselves. Ashkan Soltani was chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. He worries about the implications of unleashing this technology.
ASHKAN SOLTANI: Whether we require, for example, people to have - use this app and to provide their score on the app in order to, for example, return back to work or use public transportation.
BOND: Apple and Google say they'll release their system next month, and already, Democrats in Congress are warning that they'll keep a close eye on how the tech giants handle privacy.
Shannon Bond, NPR News, San Francisco.
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