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Google and Apple Change Tactics on Contact Tracing Tech

When the owner of one of those phones was diagnosed with Covid-19, alerts would be sent to others who had recently been nearby.

The idea was to help public health officials more quickly track down potentially exposed people and stem the spread of the virus.

Apple and Google provided the technical framework, which they term exposure notification, and guidance for how to use it.

Like much of the nations patchwork pandemic response, leaving states to sort things out individually hasnt worked very well. Discussions about creating contact tracing apps have become mired in battles about privacy and influence of big tech firms, and uncertainty about how much digital contact tracing would help the overall response to the pandemic.Thats especially the case when so many critical elementstesting, resources for the infected, manual contact tracingremain in disarray.

For Apple, the feature will be available starting Tuesday within iOS 13.7, the newest version of Apples operating system.

Apple and Google say their commitment to user privacy remains: They wont collect any identifying data, instead relying on anonymous identifiers to keep track of which phones are near each other.And although the feature is baked into the operating system, iPhone users in states where it is made available will be required to opt in.

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