Apple, Google will use your smartphone to fight coronavirus in unprecedented partnership
Two of the world’s largest companies are teaming up to weaponise your smartphone against coronavirus, with rivals Apple and Google revealing their new plan to fight, track and warn users.
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Two of the world’s largest companies are teaming up to weaponise your smartphone against coronavirus, with rivals Apple and Google revealing their new plan to fight, track and warn users about the virus overnight.
The companies say their software creations will alert smartphone users when they have come into contact with someone infected with novel coronavirus in a bid to “slow the spread of COVID-19 and accelerate the return of everyday life”.
The announcement comes after the Australian Government’s Digital Transformation Agency appeared to be recruiting software developers, legal and privacy experts to pit technology against coronavirus, and experts said the moves could help prevent a second wave of infections.
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Apple and Google announced their unprecedented partnership in the early hours of Saturday morning, revealing the companies would create new software for smartphones that government agencies could use.
“Google and Apple are announcing a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design,” the companies said in a statement.
“All of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems.”
On Twitter, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai added that Apple CEO “Tim Cook and I are committed to working together on these efforts”.
The companies will create and release the software in two stages to get it to government agencies as soon as possible.
Next month, Apple and Google said they would release software that “apps from public health authorities” could use across both iPhone and Android smartphones.
But that technology would be followed “in the coming months” by changes to the phones’ operating systems that would create a “Bluetooth-based contact-tracing platform”.
The system, which would be offered on an opt-in basis, would let users diagnosed with COVID-19 register their diagnosis in the app, triggering it to alert anyone who had been in their vicinity while contagious.
Anyone who had been alerted about a nearby case could then choose to self-isolate to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Apple and Google said the app would not personally identify users or share their locations with other users, governments or the companies themselves, and that “privacy, transparency and consent” were being considered in its development.
“Through close co-operation and collaboration with developers, governments and public health providers, we hope to harness the power of technology to help countries around the world slow the spread of COVID-19 and accelerate the return of everyday life,” the companies said.
Kearney partner and consultant Anshuman Sengar said developments such as this could play a vital role in stopping the spread of coronavirus, and Australia could be one of the countries to benefit the most.
“Australia is one of the world leaders in smartphone penetration — we are among the fourth largest adopters by penetration — and because of that we have an advantage in terms of controlling COVID-19 now,” he told News Corp.
Mr Sengar said this kind of smartphone-tracing technology could be used to ease social restrictions and prevent a second wave of infections, which he called a “W curve,” by keeping smartphone users informed about infections near them.
“The biggest use of this technology could be about managing lockdowns in a smart manner,” he said.
“You can imagine that even one week of extra lockdown will have an effect on children’s schooling.”
Apple and Google’s announcement comes just days after the Australian Digital Transformation Agency advertised a slew of software, legal and privacy roles for a “key digital product” starting this month, in a project tipped to focus on coronavirus, and after Google released movement data about Australians showing the effect of social restrictions to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
But a group of 100 civil liberties and human rights groups have also issued and signed a statement warning governments to maintain users’ privacy in new systems created to fight coronavirus.
Access Now policy analyst Lucie Krahulcova said any COVID-19 software tools should safeguard user privacy and feature an expiry date so they did not “rewrite the rules of the digital ecosystem in crisis-coloured ink which we know to be permanent”.