They are exercising sovereign power. It’s just crazy,” said Matt Stoller, the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, a Washington think tank devoted to reducing the power of monopolies. Apple and Google have “decided for the whole world,” he added, “that it’s not a decision for the public to make. … You have a private government that is making choices over your society instead of democratic governments being able to make those choices.”
Some developers who had run into the functionality issue in their own contact-tracing apps asked the companies for help. But they were told that they could only get around that rule if they used the Apple-Google system, which would prohibit them from recording location data or sharing information with contact-tracing teams.
In North Dakota, developers had built a contact-tracing app, Care19, that logged people’s smartphone location data as a memory tool: If the person tested positive, a public health worker could ask for their permission to review that data over the last two weeks to piece together where they’d gone. They had been hopeful that the Apple-Google system would further refine its accuracy.
But Apple’s restrictions against sharing data with health authorities have now forced developers there to start from scratch. They are now building two separate apps — one for contact-tracing teams, the other on Apple and Google’s system — even though they fear that will lead to lower public adoption, greater confusion and longer delays for lifesaving data.
“Every minute that ticks by, maybe someone else is getting infected, so we want to be able to use everything we can,” said Vern Dosch, the contact-tracing liaison for North Dakota. “I get it. They have a brand to protect. I just wish they would have led with their jaw.”
The coronavirus represents a massive challenge for contact tracing around the world, and some experts have said public health teams need all the help they can get. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security have estimated that the U.S. Will need to recruit and train 100,000 contact tracers to help identify the sick and quarantine the exposed.
Contact tracers today use phone calls and interviews to track people’s movements, and rely almost entirely on people’s memory. Minute-by-minute location logs recorded by people’s phones, some officials have argued, could ease that burden by providing a more precise and automated way to track new outbreaks.
“We’re sort of at the point where we just can’t do traditional contact tracing. There’s just not the manpower,” said Tyler Shelby, a graduate student at Yale’s medical and public health schools who is working on contact-tracing software.
But state teams that have tried to use apps to help with contact tracing have been stymied by the tech giants’ rules. Developers in Alberta, Canada, had built their own contact-tracing app that struggled with reliability on iPhones due to Apple’s Bluetooth restrictions. Quinn Mah, executive director of information management at Alberta Health, said he pleaded with Apple for help, but the company refused. Alberta health officials now are debating whether to give up on those plans and go with Apple’s contact-tracing system, even though it could greatly reduce their ability to track infections.
“A segment of our population has said, ‘Well, Google and Apple have done this, so why aren’t you guys adopting this?’” Mah said. “'Why would government think they could do something better than Apple and Google?'”
The companies have argued that limiting the data the apps use could bolster their adoption rate, because people may not trust or use an app that logs their location for later use by public health authorities. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found last month that a larger group of Americans said they trusted public health agencies more than Apple and Google to keep their information secure.
Some privacy advocates have applauded the companies’ stance around anonymity and security concerns. Amos Toh, an artificial intelligence and technology researcher at Human Rights Watch, said he worries that authoritarian governments might compel the companies to change the terms so that data can be scooped up and used to suppress human rights.
“It opens up a dangerous new front,” Toh said. “These technologies are unproven and we have questions about their accuracy and repercussions for the most vulnerable groups.”
But some parts of the U.S., including Apple and Google’s home state, say the restrictions have rendered the apps effectively useless. In California, epidemiologists in charge of contact tracing are ignoring the Apple-Google approach and have decided the best course for contact tracing is to train thousands of people to do the work.
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