US states promoting apps that could prove essential to ending Covid-19 lockdown head for a showdown with Apple and Google who control key software on smartphones
The Care19 mobile app, which the governors of North Dakota and South Dakota have asked residents to download to assist in contact tracing during the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease , is seen on a phone, US April 24, 2020.
Google and Apple have sought to build public trust by emphasising that the changes they are making to Bluetooth to allow the tracing apps to work will not tap phones’ GPS sensors, which privacy activists see as too intrusive. Authorities currently ask Care19 users to give them permission for timestamped GPS location data, which allows officials to manually call places where users could have spread the virus and ask for names and numbers of others who may have been there at the same time.
GPS location data allows authorities to decide which businesses may need to be closed because the virus is spreading there, and prioritise which contacts of diagnosed patients to test.
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