Apple and Google Propose Contact Tracing App

Apple and Google announced today "a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design." The companies are proposing "Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing." EPIC has previously testified in Congress in support of genuine Privacy Enhancing Techniques, which EPIC President Marc Rotenberg has defined as technologies that "minimize or eliminate the collection of personally identifiable information." But EPIC has also warned that these techniques must be "robust, scalable and provable." And EPIC has repeatedly stated that notice and consent is not the basis of data protection.