Right now, Covid-19, colloquially known as the novel coronavirus, is the biggest threat on Planet Earth. The impact the virus had and is having on the cultural, economical, and social aspects of our life is unquantifiable.
On the other hand, necessity is the mother of all inventions and a small device made out of plastic, glass and circuitry might be one of the weapons that will fight this terrible pandemic. Of course, we are talking about the smartphone, and the fact that this technological wonder residing in all of our pockets might be one of the answers to the pandemic.
Introducing CovidWatch
Following the saying, “There is an app for everything”, Stanford University, in collaboration with the US Government, developed CovidWatch. The app has been among the first to come out with an open-source protocol for privacy-preserving, using Bluetooth and decentralized contact tracing. This makes the app 99% safe in our eyes, decentralized contact tracing being very hard to crack, even by a supercomputer or a slave network.
CovidWatch allows users to shield themselves and their neighbourhoods without the need to compromise their privacy. The app employs Bluetooth signals to identify users who are in the vicinity of each other and informs each of them anonymously if they were in contact with someone who was tested positive.
The trick is decentralized contact tracing
The anonymous exposure notification system seems to be the empowering factor here, allowing communities to protect themselves from the virus. Stanford University researchers found a way to create this anonymous exposure warning system without collecting information from the users.
The team used an app checker that can scan the immediate vicinity for other apps and notifies the user if anyone in the proximity came in contact with someone that was confirmed positive. The fact that the app doesn’t rely on its data only and that it scans for others to make an informed decision can make the difference here, plus the group was the first to release an open-source protocol for anyone that wants to build an app using decentralized Bluetooth exposure notifications and has been collaborating with world organizations like TCN Coalition, CoEpi, and SafePaths to promote and support open-source protocol standards on other apps.
Right now, this method is employed by the EU on a large scale, and, as of now, decentralized contact tracing is one of the safest methods for a user to protect himself and his data. We might say that it’s an elegant, temporary solution to the COVID-19 problem.
The Stanford team started with a responsibility towards privacy, recognizing the dangers of augmented surveillance that a state might be brought about by COVID-19. It seems that decentralized contact tracing is the way to go forward but, to do that, the install base needs to be very big.
Can this app work?
The short answer is YES! The complicated one is that the app needs to have an install base of over 56% in order to give any factual results.
The team wants this app to work as a social network between friends, as many users would not want to use an app that only traces and tracks them personally. It needs to be shared and spread from user to user, or, if proved extremely effective, mandated by the local form of authority. Once the app has reached an install base of over 56%, the results may surprise the community and help fight against the spread of the Corona Virus.
It’s a necessary evil
No one wants to be tracked all the time but, in these dire circumstances, these apps can save your life and the lives of your loved ones. And governments should pass laws that make the misuse of the app data a criminal offense. Australia, for example, declared that any abuse will be punished by the full extent of the law, resulting in jail time, as more than 2 million and counting Australians downloaded a similar app.
Right now, this app can give users a safe state of mind when walking down the street. And the fact that the developers are posting regularly on GitHub to update the users on the state of the app is one of the most important aspects of the conversation.
The team presented a public paper that explains in detail what the app is capable of and what it does with your data, how it can flatten the curve, and how it would be able to fight the spread of the Corona Virus. You can also check out the GitHub repositories if you’re interested in helping the developers or implementing the progress that the Standford team made into your own version of the app.
To note, the app is in its early phase right now, and it has room to grow, although it was among the first of its kind to be developed.
There are some problems with it, like the fact that it is only available on iOS, or the fact that low-income communities may not have access to a smartphone altogether. But we can only hope that something similar for Android will show up and flatten the curve.
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