COVID-19 Could Provide Cover for Surveillance Expansion

guest · May 13, 2020

Governments Shouldn’t Use “Centralized” Proximity Tracking Technology
May 12, 2020
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/...use-centralized-proximity-tracking-technology

Companies and governments across the world are building and deploying a dizzying number of systems and apps to fight COVID-19. Many groups have converged on using Bluetooth-assisted proximity tracking for the purpose of exposure notification. Even so, there are many ways to approach the problem, and dozens of proposals have emerged.

Both centralized and decentralized models can claim to make a slew of privacy guarantees. But centralized models all rest on a dangerous assumption: that a “trusted” authority will have access to vast amounts of sensitive data and choose not to misuse it. As we’ve seen, time and again, that kind of trust doesn’t often survive a collision with reality.
Centralized Models
There are many different proximity tracking proposals that can be considered “centralized,” but generally, it means a single “trusted” authority knows things that regular users don’t.
For example, a European group called PEPP-PT has released a proposal called NTK. In NTK, a central server generates a private key for each device, but keeps the keys to itself. [...]
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Decentralized Models
In a “decentralized” proximity tracking system, the role of a central authority is minimized. Again, there are a lot of different proposals under the “decentralized” umbrella. In general, decentralized models don’t trust any central actor with information that the rest of the world can’t also see.
There are still privacy risks in decentralized systems, but in a well-designed proposal, those risks are greatly reduced.
What Are the Trade-Offs?
There are benefits and risks associated with both models. However, for the most part, centralized models benefit governments, and the risks fall on users.
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guest · May 13, 2020

In Canada, Albertans wary of 'Big Brother' with use of COVID-19 digital-tracing app
May 13, 2020
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...of-covid-19-digital-tracing-app-idUSKBN22P2BN

As the spread of the new coronavirus in Canada slows, the western province of Alberta has rolled out a digital-tracing tool to monitor outbreaks as quarantine restrictions ease. The hard part is convincing people to use it.

On May 1, Alberta launched Canada’s first smartphone app to trace and call people who have come into contact with an individual infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, so that they can isolate themselves and prevent further spread.
But so far, only about 165,000 Albertans, or less than 4% of the population, have downloaded it. By contrast, the Singapore app — the model for Alberta — has 1.4 million users, or almost 25% of the population on the Southeast Asian island.

“We all know we need to increase the uptake,” said Jia Hu, the medical officer for Alberta Health Services who is leading the rollout of the app. “People are scared of the government having their data. That’s why we made it as lean as possible.”
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But the real challenge has been the fear that “Big Brother (is) watching over you with the app”, Hu said.
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Krusty · May 14, 2020

Experts raise concerns about security of coronavirus tracing app COVIDSafe

[...]
How safe is it?
One security researcher in Australia has compiled what they say is a dossier of weaknesses they believe could make the COVIDSafe app vulnerable to a range of different attacks.

Internationally, concerns are being raised over the emergence of similar tracing apps on a global scale. Their swift rollout increases the risk that technical bugs could allow users' devices to be exploited and attacked and risks exposing more personal information.

The release of Apple's fixes to allow Bluetooth tracing apps to work on iPhones will be a significant new technical update to millions of phone users around the world. That update may mean it becomes a target for cyberattacks that could create vulnerabilities in devices.

"We're going to see a lot of attacks because this is going to be software that's running on every single phone," Ashkan Soltani, a former chief technologist for the US Federal Trade Commission, said.

"And if that's not a honeypot for anyone, I don't know what is."
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05...ronavirus-tracing-covidsafe-security/12245122

Has the Government released the source code for the app?
The Government released the source code for the app on Friday. Releasing this publicly allows security researchers to scrutinise the app and search for any vulnerabilities.

However, there was an omission — the server code that accompanies the source code was not released.

This would allow further scrutiny of how stored data is encrypted. The approach is also a departure from the Singapore Government, which has released both the app and source code.
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guest · May 14, 2020

Virus-tracing apps must not be used for mass surveillance: EU says
May 14, 2020
https://in.reuters.com/article/us-h...d-for-mass-surveillance-eu-says-idINKBN22Q1KA

COVID-19 contact-tracing apps must only be used during the pandemic and will need to be automatically de-activated once the crisis is over, EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders said on Thursday in a bid to allay concerns over state surveillance.

Countries are rushing to develop mobile tracing apps, hoping smartphone technology could help bring about a reopening of borders and economic activity without unleashing a second wave of the pandemic.

“Apps cannot be used for mass surveillance. Individuals will keep control on their data,” Reynders told EU lawmakers in a plenary sitting, as deputies reiterated concerns over risks that these apps could pose to privacy.
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hawki · May 15, 2020

"Apple and Google are building a virus-tracking system. Health officials say it will be practically useless...

As the tech giants have revealed more details, officials now say the software will be of little use. Due to strict rules imposed by the companies, the system will notify smartphone users if they’ve potentially come into contact with an infected person, but it won’t share any data with health officials or reveal where those meetings took place...

Apple and Google have refused, arguing that letting the apps collect location data or loosening other smartphone rules would undermine people’s privacy. The companies are also concerned that easing the restrictions around apps’ Bluetooth use would drain phone battery life, which could irritate customers..."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/15/app-apple-google-virus/

Krusty · May 15, 2020

Apple and Google care about people's privacy?

Thankful · May 16, 2020

9/11 saw much of our privacy swept aside. Coronavirus could end it altogether
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/16/tech/surveillance-privacy-coronavirus-npw-intl/index.html

guest · May 16, 2020

Utah Says No to Apple/Google COVID-19 Tracing; Debuts Startup App
May 14, 2020
https://threatpost.com/utah-apple-google-covid-19-tracing-startup-app/155742/

The state of Utah has settled on a contact-tracing mobile app that collects detailed user location information to track the spread of COVID-19 among citizens – eschewing the API model proposed by Apple and Google in April.

The information collected by the app will be shared with public health officials (as expected) as well as a “limited number” of Twenty employees. Speaking to CNBC, Twenty chief strategy officer Jared Allgood explained how the state would use the data.

“Through that data we can identify whether or not two people have spent some time together.” From there, contact tracers can swing into action, making calls and contacting infected and exposed persons’ other contacts.
Armed with the data from the app, contact tracers and the patient “together can step through his list of location history,” Allgood said.
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In terms of privacy protections, Healthy Together is an opt-in scheme, and users can limit location services if they choose. “While the State will have access to your symptom data, location and Bluetooth data will only be released to the state should you test positive for COVID-19,” according to the official website. And according to the app’s privacy policy, the data is stored on Twenty’s servers for 30 days, after which it’s deleted.

Any approach to app-based contact tracing comes with potential problems, Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate with Comparitech, told Threatpost. For instance, the Apple/Google decentralized model is more private and less prone to developer abuse and data breaches than using centralized GPS tracking like Healthy Together – however, it makes it more difficult to verify diagnoses without users’ identities.
It’s also vulnerable to attacks, he explained.

“Bluetooth offers more accurate real-time proximity tracking than GPS and the data is easier to anonymize, though…it’s more prone to trolling, and a well-resourced adversary could track users with linkage attacks.”
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guest · May 17, 2020

Tech Could Be Used to Track Employees—in the Name of Health
Makers of product-tracking beacons suggest using the tools to help enforce social distancing in the workplace
May 17, 2020
https://www.wired.com/story/tech-used-track-employees-name-health/

Now Estimote is touting its wearable beacons as a way to combat the spread of the coronavirus. A new analytics package will help managers pinpoint high-touch areas for cleaning, show them when workers flout workplace social distancing rules, and identify those who need to quarantine after a colleague tests positive.

They are repurposing and repackaging their beacons and software as tools to track workers’ movements inside workplaces. But it’s not clear how many takers there are, and some public health experts question how effective the measures will really be. Privacy experts also warn that the trend could further erode personal privacy.

“A lot of these things can be akin to ‘security theater,’” says Shweta Bansal, a professor at Georgetown University who uses computational methods to model the spread of disease.
Bansal says a system that tracks workers’ movements may be useful to figure out who has been in close contact with a person who’s tested positive for the coronavirus. But she’s skeptical that the technology will keep workers safe.
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“There are going to be systems that are deployed in literally every building that monitor behavior,” says Density CEO Andrew Farrah. “And it's just a question of how deep down the surveillance rabbit hole we go.”
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Nebulus · May 17, 2020

hawki said: ↑

"Apple and Google are building a virus-tracking system. Health officials say it will be practically useless...
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And not only health officials think it is useless. Bruce Schneier thinks so too.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/05/me_on_covad-19_.html

"My problem with contact tracing apps is that they have absolutely no value," Bruce Schneier, a privacy expert and fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, told BuzzFeed News. "I'm not even talking about the privacy concerns, I mean the efficacy. Does anybody think this will do something useful? ... This is just something governments want to do for the hell of it. To me, it's just techies doing techie things because they don't know what else to do."
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guest · May 18, 2020

The technologies the world is using to track coronavirus — and people
May 18, 2020
https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/18/...rld-is-using-to-track-coronavirus-and-people/

Now that the world is in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, governments are quickly deploying their own cocktails of tracking methods.
These include device-based contact tracing, wearables, thermal scanning, drones, and facial recognition technology. It’s important to understand how those tools and technologies work and how governments are using them to track not just the spread of the coronavirus, but the movements of their citizens.
Contact tracing and smartphone data
But the devil is in the details. There are obvious concerns about data privacy and abuse if that data is exposed or misused by those who hold it. And the tradeoffs between privacy and measures needed to curb the spread of COVID-19 are a matter of extensive debate.
Thermal scanning
And thermal scanners are highly problematic, mainly because there’s little evidence of their efficacy.
Although false negatives are dangerous because they could let a sick person through a checkpoint, false positives could result in people being unfairly detained.
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Facial recognition and other AI
In fact, rhetoric about the urgency of the fight against the coronavirus may provide narrative cover for accelerating the development or deployment of facial recognition systems that may never be dismantled — unless stringent legal guardrails are put in place now.
The drone problem
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is emphatic that there must be guardrails around the use of drones for any kind of coronavirus-related surveillance or tracking, and it wrote about the dangers they pose.
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guest · May 19, 2020

Big Tech Is Turning Hospitals Into Real-Time Surveillance Centers
May 14, 2020
https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2020/05/big-tech-is-turning-hospitals-into-real.html

Recent events have come to light about hospital surveillance that should concern everyone.
Big Tech is using the pandemic as an excuse to turn hospitals into mirror images of law enforcement's real-time crime centers.

When Google announced that they were donating 10,000 Nest cameras to hospitals, my jaw dropped.

"With these Nest Cams, nurses and doctors will be able to check in on patients, supplementing in-person checks. This means there will be a reduction of physical contact, and therefore less of a need for personal protection equipment (PPE), which has fast become a scare resource."
What makes Google's donation so jaw dropping is how Big Tech companies are using the pandemic to make them appear magnanimous.

As The Guardian discovered, it also sends that information to Google servers.
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Why would Google donate 10,000 Nest cameras to 6,146 hospitals? Because they are hoping that the staff and patients will grow accustomed to being surveilled 24/7, and they hope hospitals will eventually purchase a Nest Aware subscription.

Does anyone really think that 3,075 hospital police departments will return Google's Nest cameras after the pandemic?
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It is reprehensible to see how the mass media portrays Big tech in such a positive light as they slowly turn our hospitals into real-time surveillance centers.
Do we really want to live in a future where hospitals mirror police department real-time crime centers? Once hospitals acquire surveillance technology, mission creep dictates that it will grow and grow until there is no turning back.
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Minimalist · May 19, 2020

Apple And Google Set To Release Coronavirus API Amidst Privacy Furore

Google and Apple may release their coronavirus contact-tracing API as soon as Thursday, as the NHS considers whether to adopt the “decentralised” model used by the two smartphone makers.
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https://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/apple-google-coronavirus-api-344348

guest · May 20, 2020

Democrats in House and Senate Introduce Public Health Emergency Privacy Act
May 18, 2020
https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2...ntroduce-public-health-emergency-privacy-act/

On May 14, 2020 Democrats in both the House and Senate introduced the Public Health Emergency Privacy Act (“the Act”). In the House, the Act was sponsored by Representatives Jan Schakowsky (IL), Anna Eshoo (CA) and Suzan DelBene (WA), and in the Senate was sponsored by Senators Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Mark Warner (VA).

Similar to the recently-introduced COVID-19 Consumer Data Protection Act of 2020, the Act would put temporary rules in place regarding the collection, use and disclosure of emergency health data used to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

In particular, the Act would only apply to personal data concerning the COVID-19 health emergency, including physical or behavioral health information and data such as geolocation data, proximity data and demographic data, collected for the purpose of tracking, screening, monitoring, contact tracing or otherwise responding to COVID-19.
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stapp · May 20, 2020

Coronavirus: Serco apologises for sharing contact tracers' email addresses

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52732818

guest · May 20, 2020

French judge bans drones used to monitor compliance with coronavirus restrictions
May 18, 2020
https://thehill.com/policy/technolo...rones-in-monitoring-compliance-of-coronavirus

A judge in France has halted the government's use of drones to enforce stay-at-home orders, citing privacy concerns.

Bloomberg News reported Monday that the Conseil d'État, one of the highest courts in the country, ruled that police authorities may only use drone surveillance to enforce social distancing and other coronavirus restrictions once concerns about the data collected by the drones are addressed.
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The ruling comes after privacy groups including La Quadrature du Net filed a lawsuit arguing that the drones used by Paris police collected information on individuals without their knowledge and stored it without their consent without any limits.

“If the police intended to take advantage of the health crisis to test new gadgets, they got things wrong,” the groups said at the time, according to Bloomberg.
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Minimalist · May 20, 2020

France looks past Google, Apple for virus contact tracing

France, which has long been sceptical of the growing power of US tech titans, is seeking to bypass Apple and Google for a smartphone app to help trace people infected with the novel coronavirus.
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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-france-google-apple-virus-contact.html

Minimalist · May 21, 2020

Norwegians find 'privacy' concerns in virus-tracing app

Norwegian tech experts said Wednesday that a government app released to help trace the spread of the new coronavirus in the country, did not sufficiently protect personal "privacy."
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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-norwegians-privacy-virus-tracing-app.html

Krusty · May 21, 2020

Google and Apple release technology to help with coronavirus contact tracing

New technology that could help alert people who have been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 is being tested to determine if it will work in Australia.

Google and Apple have devised a COVID-19 exposure notification system they hope health authorities globally will use to build contract tracing apps and improve existing platforms, like Australia's COVIDSafe.

It has been offered to governments across the world and so far 22 countries have requested and received access to the technology, including Australia.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05...ogy-help-coronavirus-contact-tracing/12271728

hawki · May 21, 2020

"One of the first contact-tracing apps violates its own privacy policy...sends users’ location data to more than just the government

A new analysis of one of the first of a handful of U.S. contact-tracing apps, North and South Dakota’s Care19, finds it violates its own privacy policy by sharing citizen location and other personal data with an outside company...

The oversight suggests that state officials and Apple, both of which were responsible for vetting the app before it became available April 7, were asleep at the wheel..."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/21/care19-dakota-privacy-coronavirus/

guest · May 25, 2020

Coronavirus Monitoring Bracelets Flood the Market, Ready to Snitch on People Who Don’t Distance
May 25, 2020
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/25/coronavirus-tracking-bracelets-monitors-surveillance-supercom/

Surveillance firms around the world are licking their lips at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cash in on the coronavirus by repositioning one of their most invasive products: the tracking bracelet.

Take AiRISTA Flow, a Maryland-based outfit that helps corporations track their “assets,” breathing or not. In an April 21 press release, the company announced it would begin selling Bluetooth and Wi-Fi trackers to be worn on an employee’s wrist like a Fitbit — or around their neck like a cowbell.

“When people come within six feet of each other for a period of time,” the company wrote in a press release, “the device makes an audible chirp and a record of the contact is made in the AiRISTA Flow software system.
The company’s marketing language is explicit in talking up the nonviral benefits of tracking your workers’ every move: By helping companies “Locate people and things in real time” [...]
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In a press release published just a day after AiRISTA Flow’s, Boston-based Redpoint Positioning Corporation, [...]
Redpoint boasted in the announcement of its ability to use these tags to “track the location of people and equipment with extremely high accuracy, even in complex industrial environments,” now with a coronavirus-specific augmentation: “If social distancing parameters, such as a 1- or 2-meter radius, are violated between workers, the tag alarm will alert them to the hazard.”

While the AiRISTA and Redpoint trackers merely evoke the aesthetics of a police state in the workplace, Israeli surveillance outfit SuperCom is literally repackaging as a Covid-19 “solution” technology previously used on incarcerated or criminally convicted people.
It’s the house arrest expertise that the company is now marketing as PureCare, described on the SuperCom website as a “state-of-the-art solution for quarantine and isolation monitoring to aid government efforts in containing and limiting the reach of infectious diseases” [...]
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guest · May 26, 2020

Govt open-sources code for Aarogya Setu Android app
May 27, 2020
https://www.livemint.com/technology...-aarogya-setu-android-app-11590502128868.html

India on Tuesday said it will release the code for the Android version of its contact tracing app Aarogya Setu on open-source code repository Github.

Starting Wednesday, anyone will be able to see and study the Aarogya Setu code on Github. The government said all subsequent updates will be made open-source through this repository and the iOS and KaiOS (on JioPhone) versions of the app will also be made open-source soon.

“This is a unique thing to be done. No other government product anywhere in the world has been open-sourced at this scale. Today, its scale and size is 115 million. It cuts across phones, IVRS. Only product available in 12 languages. All covid-19 related apps put together, Aarogya Setu is bigger than all of them," Amitabh Kant, chief executive of NITI Aayog said.
The move should help the government quell questions around privacy that many have raised about the app. Privacy activists have demanded open-sourcing the app’s code ever since it was released.
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It will also keep anyone from making false claims about what data the app takes from users, and let developers pinpoint the kind of data the app publishes.
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GitHub repository: AarogyaSetu_Android

guest · May 26, 2020

France’s data protection watchdog reviews contact-tracing app StopCovid
May 26, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/f...tchdog-reviews-contact-tracing-app-stopcovid/

France’s data protection watchdog CNIL has released its second review of StopCovid, the contact-tracing app backed by the French government. The CNIL says there’s no major issue with the technical implementation and legal framework around StopCovid, with some caveats.

France isn’t relying on Apple and Google’s contact-tracing API. Instead, a group of research institutes and private companies have worked on a separate solution.
At the heart of StopCovid, there’s a centralized contact-tracing protocol called ROBERT. It relies on a central server to assign a permanent ID and generate ephemeral IDs attached to this permanent ID.
ROBERT has been a controversial topic as it isn’t an anonymous system — it relies on pseudonymisation.
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The CNIL says that the government promises there won’t be any negative consequence if you’re not using StopCovid, nor any privilege if you’re using it. The government also promises that you’ll be able to delete pseudonymised data from the server. All of this is still ‘to be confirmed’ with the final decree.
Finally, the CNIL recommends some changes when it comes to informing users about data collection and data retention — it’s hard to understand what happens with your data right now.
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guest · May 26, 2020

Qatar: Contact tracing app security flaw exposed sensitive personal details of more than one million
May 26, 2020
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/qatar-covid19-contact-tracing-app-security-flaw/

Serious security vulnerabilities in Qatar’s mandatory contact tracing app, uncovered by Amnesty International, must act as a wake-up call for governments rolling-out COVID-19 apps to ensure privacy safeguards are central to the technology.

An investigation by Amnesty’s Security Lab discovered the critical weakness in the configuration of Qatar’s EHTERAZ contact tracing app. Now fixed, the vulnerability would have allowed cyber attackers to access highly sensitive personal information, including the name, national ID, health status and location data of more than one million users.
Amnesty alerted the Qatari authorities to the vulnerability shortly after making the discovery on Thursday 21 May. The authorities acted swiftly to fix the weakness by the end of Friday 22 May.

“While the Qatari authorities were quick to fix this issue, it was a huge security weakness and a fundamental flaw in Qatar’s contact tracing app that malicious attackers could have easily exploited. This vulnerability was especially worrying given use of the EHTERAZ app was made mandatory last Friday,” said Claudio Guarnieri, Head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab.
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Background
The investigation by Amnesty Security Lab found Qatar’s EHTERAZ app requested a QR code from the central server by providing the national ID the user registered with. No additional authentication was required, so anyone could have requested a QR code for any EHTERAZ user.

The lack of authentication and the fact that Qatari national IDs follow a consistent format meant it was possible to automatically generate all possible combinations of national IDs and retrieve the sensitive data that EHTERAZ stores.
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guest · May 27, 2020

Big Brother is already watching you – so let him help fight COVID-19
May 26, 2020
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-big-brother-covid-.html

'Big Brother' tracking technology is already a reality of modern life, so should be embraced to help combat the spread of COVID-19, a leading expert has argued.

The use of mobile phones, CCTV and other technology to track movement has long been criticised by many for being an invasion of privacy. However, recording the movement of individuals who may later test positive for COVID-19 could help to cut the spread of the disease by warning those who come into contact with them, preventing further spread.

Professor Warwick said: "Our concept of privacy must change, particularly at a time of exceptional circumstances such as these. We have a plethora of information available, yet we do not use it.
Professor Schmitt said: "Government intrusions into the privacy of individuals, such as tracking their movements, can be justified in certain circumstances. To meet the requirements of international human rights law, they must be necessary to achieve a 'legitimate purpose' – but this requirement is clearly satisfied if used for tracing during a pandemic.
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"Any tracking program would need to be designed so as not to be more intrusive than necessary in the circumstances. Such a program would be lawful under international law, although only if very carefully crafted."
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