Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google have said that they will work together to create contact tracing technology that aims to slow the spread of the coronavirus, by allowing users to opt into logging other phones they have been near.
The rare collaboration between the two Silicon Valley companies, whose operating systems power 99% of the world’s smartphones, could accelerate usage of apps that aim to get potentially infected individuals into testing or quarantine more quickly and reliably than existing systems in much of the world.
Such tracing will play a vital role in managing the virus once lockdown orders end, health experts say.
The planned technology also throws the weight of the tech leaders into a global conflict between privacy advocates who favour a decentralised system to trace contacts and governments in Europe and Asia pushing centralised approaches that have technical weaknesses and potentially let governments know with whom people associate.
“With Apple and Google, you get all the public health functions you need with a decentralised and privacy-friendly app,” said Michael Veale, University College London legal lecturer involved in European contact tracing system DP3T.
Centralised solutions such as those proposed in Britain and Germany would no longer work under the new technology, he said.
To be effective, the Silicon Valley system would require millions of people to opt in the system, trusting the technology companies’ safeguards, as well as smooth oversight by public health systems.
