Apple and Google are building a Covid-19 tracking system into iOS and Android

Apple and Google announced a system for tracking the spread of the new coronavirus, allowing users to share data through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions and approved apps from health organizations. The new system, which is laid out in a series of documents and white papers, would use short-range Bluetooth communications to establish a voluntary contact-tracing network, keeping extensive data on phones that have been in close proximity with each other. Official apps from public health authorities will get access to this data, and users who download them can report if they’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19.


The system will also alert people who download them to whether they were in close contact with an infected person. Apple and Google will introduce a pair of iOS and Android APIs in mid-May and make sure these health authorities’ apps can implement them. During this phase, users will still have to download an app to participate in contact-tracing, which could limit adoption. But in the months after the API is complete, the companies will work on building tracing functionality into the underlying operating system, as an option immediately available to everyone with an iOS or Android phone. Contact tracing which involves figuring out who an infected person has been in contact with and trying to prevent them from infecting others is one of the most promising solutions for containing COVID-19, but using digital surveillance technology to do it raises massive privacy concerns and questions about effectiveness. Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about tracking users with phone data, arguing that any system would need to be limited in scope and avoid compromising user privacy.


Unlike some other methods like, say, using GPS data this Bluetooth plan wouldn’t track people’s physical location. It would basically pick up the signals of nearby phones at 5-minute intervals and store the connections between them in a database. If one person tests positive for the novel coronavirus, they could tell the app they’ve been infected, and it could notify other people whose phones passed within close range in the preceding days. The system also takes a number of steps to prevent people from being identified, even after they’ve shared their data. While the app regularly sends information out over Bluetooth, it broadcasts an anonymous key rather than a static identity, and those keys cycle every 15 minutes to preserve privacy. Even once a person shares that they’ve been infected, the app will only share keys from the specific period in which they were contagious. Crucially, there is no centrally accessible master list of which phones have matched, contagious or otherwise. That’s because the phones themselves are performing the cryptographic calculations required to protect privacy. The central servers only maintain the database of shared keys, rather than the interactions between those keys. The method still has potential weaknesses. In crowded areas, it could flag people in adjacent rooms who aren’t actually sharing space with the user, making people worry unnecessarily. It may also not capture the nuance of how long someone was exposed working next to an infected person all day, for example, will expose you to a much greater viral load than walking by them on the street. And it depends on people having apps in the short term and up-to-date smartphones in the long term, which could mean it’s less effective in areas with lower connectivity. It’s also a relatively new program, and Apple and Google are still talking to public health authorities and other stakeholders about how to run it. This system probably can’t replace old-fashioned methods of contact tracing which involve interviewing infected people about where they’ve been and who they’ve spent time with but it could offer a high-tech supplement using a device that billions of people already own.

TikTok pledges $375M in support of COVID-19 relief efforts

TikTok has announced a series of relief funds and initiatives to support those fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, and to help other individuals and organizations struggling with its impact. In total, the company is pledging $375 million; including $250 million in funds, $100 million in ad credits, and $25 million in ad space for public health information. The $250 million in funding is split into a couple of different relief funds. There’s the Health Heroes Relief Fund ($150 million), which will provide money for medical staff, supplies and hardship relief for healthcare workers.


Then there’s its Community Relief Fund ($40 million) which provides money to organizations helping communities that have been hit hard by the health crisis (TikTok will also match an additional $10 million in donations). Finally, the service has pledged $50 million to support distance learning initiatives. Along with the direct funds, TikTok is promising $25 million in ad space to help NGOs, health authorities, and local authorities to deliver public health information. TikTok has been criticized for allowing coronavirus conspiracy theories to spread on its platform. Last month, MediaMatters reported on one conspiracy theory that warned of an imminent “national quarantine,” which spread in a series of videos with thousands of views between them. These videos remained on the service, despite TikTok updating its rules of conduct back in January to crack down on misinformation that can cause harm. Finally, there’s $100 million in ad credits to help small and medium-sized businesses which are struggling in the wake of the pandemic. TikTok says the program will be rolling out worldwide in the coming months, but added that this rollout will depend on the advice around restarting business operations given by health authorities. TikTok is far from the first platform to have announced funding or ad credits for organizations hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Google has announced a $200 million investment fund and $340 million in ad credits for small and medium-sized businesses, Apple has launched a $50 million fund to help the music industry, while Facebook has invested $100 million in journalism to support reporting that’s now more essential than even. Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also announced he would be donating $1 billion in equity, amounting to over a quarter of his net worth, to fund COVID-19 relief worldwide.