Re:NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan
by garmaine on Monday April 27, 2020 @02:46PM
(#22998685)
What travelers.
Re:NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan
by MandieD on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @08:24AM
(#23006288)
Residents of a country where they are not a citizen, like me (American living in Germany). A year from now, I might decide to visit my home country, and even be allowed back in, and if I stood in the customs line in Amsterdam near a Frenchman who hung out with someone in Montreal who turned up positive, it would be in everyone's interest for me to know I was exposed.
Even traveling between Munich and Nuremberg, a one hour trip, I might be on a train near an Austrian who saw no reason to leave Munich during all this heading up to Berlin to finish a consulting contract, but a week ago had been in a meeting with a German who turned up positive. Our Austrian consultant would have been allowed to stay this past "shelter-in-place" month if she had a lease on an apartment and had registered it as her primary residence - no residence permit required, as she's an EU citizen. Again, it would be in everyone's interest for the three of us (and everyone we had much time around) to know about when the exposure took place and that we might need to self-quarantine/be tested.
Re:NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan
by breischl on Monday April 27, 2020 @04:25PM
(#22999630)
Fair point right now, but that's not going to be the case forever. And once things start to open up again and cases are less common, this kind of contact tracing will become even more important to track down new outbreaks.
Re:NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan
by radicalbyte on Monday April 27, 2020 @04:31PM
(#22999713)
The ones who live in Germany and work in France. Replace with most European countries.
Hadn't thought of this until you mentioned it, but having it only work within a country could significantly hinder the ability to trace imported cases (ie, cases from travelers).
If the data is housed in country-of-citizenship, then travelers would not notify people they contact while abroad.
If the data is housed in country-of-current-location, then people who test positive while abroad might not notify people in their home country whom they contacted before leaving. There might also be failures cases when they return home, but those could probably be solved with careful implementation.
Regardless, this seems like a case where a single international, globally-accessible registry is useful. And therefore privacy becomes a very important concern.