Google and Apple Team Up for Contact Tracking; Muneeb Ali Shares his Views
After Google and Apple made a declaration about teaming up together to help the health officials slow down the spread of the COVID-19, there have been a lot of opinions coming up about the partnership.
Muneeb Ali, the CEO and CO-Founder of – Blockstack PBC recently took over twitter to talk about his views on this upcoming partnership.
Google and Apple team up for contact tracking, logical step given virus.
Privacy advocates silently cry about future surveillance implications.
It’s during a crisis that civil liberties get taken away, never to come back.
— muneeb.btc (@muneeb) April 10, 2020
What is this Partnership?
The government and health authorities have been persistently putting remarkable efforts to combat the deadly Coronavirus and find solutions to stop the spread. The software developers across the globe are making contributions by creating tools to help fight the virus and save lives. Google and Apple have announced their collaboration to enable the use of Bluetooth service that will help the government and health officials to reduce the spread with an increase in user privacy.
In May, both the companies will be releasing their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that will enable inter-operation between the Android and iOS devices using the public health authority apps. These applications will be available for users to be downloaded from their respective app stores.
To help public health officials slow the spread of #COVID19, Google & @Apple are working on a contact tracing approach designed with strong controls and protections for user privacy. @tim_cook and I are committed to working together on these efforts.https://t.co/T0j88YBcFu
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) April 10, 2020
How Does this Work?
Since we all know that the virus is spread through human contact, the health officials have considered contact tracing as a prime tool to help reduce the spread of the virus. There have been a number of health authorities, NGOs across the globe who are working to make required development for the contact tracing technology.
To encourage this idea and the effort, Google and Apple are going to launch a detailed solution that will comprise an API and operating system of technologies to facilitate and enable contact tracing.
In the coming few months, Apple and Google will be working to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform with the help of building this function over the underlying platform. The main aim of this entire plan is to ensure privacy, transparency, and consent. The companies are looking forward to building this functionality by consulting interested stakeholders.
Both Apple and Google consider this as the most important time where all of us need to work together to find a solution against the deadly virus. Through the developers, government and health officials’ cooperation and collaboration, both companies are looking to take advantage of the technology to help the world tackle the global health crisis.
