Until yesterday would you ever imagine Apple and Google could team up?

For those who value the use of technology in favor of building a better world, this is very good news that comes against the dramatic reports and fake stories about the negative impacts of the pandemic on the economy and social life.

The two global giants announced last Friday that they will jointly create a technology solution aimed at alerting smartphone users that they have been exposed to someone infected by the new coronavirus.

The pandemic provoked a virtuous and unusual partnership between two market competitors

Just as has been reported in the news channels all over the world, coronavirus is spreading at exponential rates. One of the biggest reasons of this quick dissemination is because there is a period of incubation of the virus, while the patient is already infected and capable of passing the virus ahead, but he or she does not present any symptoms.

The proposed solution is pretty simple: the ones who have been exposed to infected people will be communicated so that they can perform social isolation, preventing the spread of the disease, even before the first symptoms.

Privacy concern

At first, a technological solution involving the tracking of contact between people may leads to the privacy invasion old controversy. However, by paying attention to the first technical details of the proposed solution, it is clear the concern of the two companies with this aspect.

A technical analysis of the solution shows the care for the privacy

Information about contacts and whether they are sick or not will only be used if there is explicit consent from people (what is known as opt-in), more specifically:

People should allow the screening and crossing of their contacts for the specific purpose of identifying the risk of infection;
The infected person should allow this information to be used to alert those who have had contact with him or her;
No information is collected about the people location;
The alert sent will not include information about who was the infected person with whom they had contact.

Moreover, once aware of the recent exposure to someone who has tested positive to COVID-19, the decision to isolate oneself socially is a personal option, unless local legislation allows government agencies to be aware of this information and, in addition, to have the power and capability to make this isolation compulsory.

Technical details of the solution

Concerning themselves with transparency, since the announcement of the partnership, Apple and Google have disclosed details of the solution through technical specifications and elucidative summaries cointaining the visual identity of the two brands.

The two companies are developing Application program Interfaces (APIs) and modifications to the operating system to enable and facilitate contact tracking via bluetooth, regardless of the user’s platform.

The development project of this solution has peculiar restrictions and risks that makes it particularly delicate and complex:

It involves aspects such as information security and privacy assurance
It involves unprecedented integration between the two technology platforms
The urgency is evident

Because of this, the companies have prepared a two phases delivery schedule. In the first phase, to be completed in May 2020, APIs will be made available to allow interoperability between Android and iOS devices through applications made available by public health authorities. In the second phase, to be completed in the following months, Apple and Google will work to incorporate bluetooth tracking functionality into their respective operating systems. This second solution is more robust than the first and will allow the use of functionality by a larger number of users, since it will come with all security mechanisms and the built-in opt-in function. It will basically pick up the signals of nearby phones at 5-minute intervals and store the connections between them in a database.

The announcement was made simultaneously on the websites of the two market competitors and brought to all of us the hope that we are experiencing the beginning of a transformation of global impact in the commercial and technological scenarios. This partnership was made possible thanks to a common goal of helping smartphone user communities around the world slow down the spread of COVID-19 and thus anticipate the return of all of us to a normal life.