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A comment on The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in open source. Parent comment

Re:The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in... by gregwebs on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @05:50PM (#23396766)
Contact tracing is exactly the kind of tool that would help track outbreaks from protests. Unfortunately in the US we have almost no contact tracing going on.

It is unclear how bad the spread from protests will be since protesters are outside and often wear masks, and the density of protesters can vary greatly. I haven't read of documented super spreader events that occurred exclusively outdoors, it would be great science to track the spread due to protests.

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Re:The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in... by usaar333 on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @06:04PM (#23396922)
* no mobile contact tracing - lots of actual.

I'm not sure how much the mobile protocols would even help in protests. Don't you need proximity with someone for 30 minutes or so to be tagged a contact?

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Re:The Italian Covid contact-tracing app is now developed in... by crushthecurve on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @07:12PM (#23397646)
If there was a mobile contact tracing app that used AGPS with accuracy down to ~1m maybe it would be useful?

Existing contact tracing apps use Bluetooth which can't be used to determine proximity with any reliability - solid objects (particularly human bodies) absorb significant signal.

Unless all protestors were holding their phones up high for unimpeded line-of-site connections then even protestors next to each other could 'appear' 20-30m away.

In most cases (especially in a protest situation) all Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps can tell you is that two devices are in Bluetooth range (so accuracy of ~30m?).

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