Contact Tracing Discussion Summary

 The below paragraph describes the functionality of proximity-based digital contact tracing. This keeps a record on who you have been in contact with to mitigate the spread of COVID, and provides more information to the end-user. Proximity-contact tracing is also Bluetooth-dependent, as that it takes low power, and helps provide time-sensitive alerts if one has been in contact with someone with COVID, as well as maintain the privacy of end users. 

The possible proximity technologies for digital contact tracing are Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and cellular towers. They find the location using a process called triangulation.

Despite the fact that these technologies can benefit humanity, there are tradeoffs of each service.

Bluetooth consumes low amounts of power, and is often more accurate compared to the rest of the technologies. However, they have security flaws in regards to the vulnerabilities in the code, they need an app on the iPhone, and most citizens have Bluetooth turned off. 

You don't always have wifi/connection issues and Wifi is often less accurate than BlueTooth. The date and time are logged, which can be an ethical breach of privacy. You also don't need consent for wifi to run. 

GPS requires a high power consumption and less privacy. It also needs an application on phone and users must explicitly opt-in. It is less accurate than Bluetooth. 

Now the question is, why was GPS not proposed as the leading protocol? There are several reasons. It can be difficult to get to indoor locations at all times, and store a lot of sensitive information to users. This is very taxing to mobile devices and not as accurate as Bluetooth at calculating proximity.

Another question to ask is what factors enable or inhibit the mass use of contact tracing apps in practice. Privacy Concerns, and Adoption of technology will inhibit the rapid spread of contact tracing. Mobile resources might not be evenly distributed, since the battery life will not be enough. People may also need to update the OS to enable the digital contact tracing, and 43% of people say they would opt-in. Also, there is no way to override the HIPPA violation if users don't accept a privacy notice. 

In places where contact tracing apps are being used, they are not being effective. The adoption rates are extremely low in anti-authoritarian states and countries, and only effective to a certain degree on college campuses. Mandatory countries are also doing well. The government mandated a single platform for contact tracing, but brings up privacy tracing. They really do not care, though. 

So how can these apps be more effective in practice? A single database can be implemented for uniformity and coverage. However, the issue here is that people can be concerned with privacy and not sign up to participate. People can be more transparent on where information is stored and encourage education on various technologies. We can discuss the type of technology and centralized vs decentralized services. Governments and private businesses might also store part of the data.

So what do we do? We need to be more effective at getting the results in real-time to the end user. Maybe an automated system will work, but again, there also may be privacy concerns. There can be also regular testing at a user base, and randomize the people being tested to avoid overflow. There finally should be security experts and law enforcements to prevent data misuse.