With any luck, this could help turn the tide of the pandemic.
COVID-19 exposure technology developed via a partnership between Apple and Google is now available in 23 countries across five continents. This allows governments to release
Per Apple CEO Tim Cook:
Technology can help health officials rapidly tell someone they may have been exposed to COVID-19. Today the Exposure Notification API we created with @Google is available to help public health agencies make their COVID-19 apps effective while protecting user privacy.
A number of provisions have been made by Apple and Google to try and balance effectiveness and user privacy.
Some countries have opted out of the model proposed by Apple and Google. The UK is currently developing a centralized system that is being developed on the Isle of Wight.
On Tuesday, a variety of security flaws within the app were highlighted. Vanessa Teague, CEO of Thinking Cybersecurity, who investigated the apps, commented:
There can still be bugs and security vulnerabilities in either the decentralised or the centralised models. But the big difference is that a decentralised solution wouldn’t have a central server with the recent face-to-face contacts of every infected person. So there’s a much lower risk of that database being leaked or abused.
Still, here’s hoping this leads to some valuable new tools in the long run.
Via The Mac Observer, Reuters, @Tim_Cook, and bbc.co.uk