The smartphone in your pocket may soon let you know if you’ve been exposed to COVID-19.As communities around the world consider the first steps toward reopening, there is fear that once people begin moving, the virus will spread. But COVID-19 presents unique challenges to stop its spread. Some who are infected never had symptoms; those who do fall ill can spread the disease for a day or two before experiencing a cough or body chills, some of the common COVID-19 symptoms.Apple, Google and others are working on a plan to use smartphones to inform those who have crossed paths with an infected person. They call it “exposure notification.” A digital tool for health authoritiesNext month, Apple, the maker of the iPhone, and Google, whose Android operating system powers the majority of smartphones in the world, will release software tools that will allow devices to exchange information via Bluetooth. Public health authorities and their partners will build apps that they will use to notify people if they’ve been exposed to someone who has tested positive for the virus.But will it work? There are many hurdles ahead. Many people will need to download the app for it to work properly, and many may want to be reassured that their privacy won’t be compromised, their data won’t be hacked. And there are many technical challenges. For example, if the app reduces the phone’s ability to function.“This is complicated because it’s untested speculative technology,” said Harper Reed, an entrepreneur and former chief technology officer for the Obama campaign. “If it doesn’t work, we can put people in danger. But if it does work, early notification of exposure can dramatically help our communities limit and survive COVID-19.”WATCH: Here’s how contact tracing works Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyWhere does the data live?Around the world, there’s a debate about technology and policy. Should government health authorities collect data or should the data live on smartphones? Apple, Google and some groups in the U.S. insist the data should live on phones — to protect people’s privacy but also to make the data less of a target for hackers.Some governments are working on apps that use global positioning system (GPS) data. The Apple and Google technology does not. If the app is private and secure, people are more likely to use it, said Henry de Valence with the TCN Coalition, a coalition of app developers and others working on the technology and policies underlying exposure notification.“People want to be able to help out and contain the spread of disease,” he said. “And so if you give them an option that poses no risk to them, but allows them to help themselves and others, people are just going to opt into that without having to be required to.”There are many unknowns still about how an exposure notification app will work and whether it will see widespread adoption. But there’s hope that technology may play a role in slowing down the virus’s spread.
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YouTube, the video service of Alphabet Inc’s Google, said on Tuesday it would start showing text and links from third-party fact checkers to U.S. viewers, part of efforts to curb misinformation on the site during the COVID-19 pandemic. The information panels, launched in Brazil and India last year, will highlight third-party, fact-checked articles above search results for specific topics such as “covid and ibuprofen.” Social media sites including Facebook are under pressure to combat misinformation relating to the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus, from false cures to conspiracy theories. YouTube said in a blog post that more than a dozen U.S. publishers are participating in its fact-checking network.
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Communities in the United States and around the world are talking about when and how to ease lockdown measures as they grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. This disease and how it spreads presents some unique challenges. People without symptoms can infect others, and for some, it can be deadly. What if a smartphone app could let you know if you have been exposed? Michelle Quinn reports.
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More than a million Australians have downloaded a coronavirus contact tracing app within hours of it being released by the government. Officials have said the technology would help Australia get back to normal and help lift restrictions, but it has been criticized by civil liberties groups. Australia has managed to control its coronavirus outbreak, but officials worry about the risk of another flareup. There are 6,713 confirmed Covid-19 infections in Australia. 83 people have died. The Australian government says the voluntary app will help to save lives. It is designed to enable health officials to trace people potentially exposed to COVID-19. Smartphone users who download the app will be notified if they have had contact with another user who has tested positive for coronavirus. It uses Bluetooth signals to log when people have been close to one another. Officials believe it could help to trace undiagnosed COVID-19 infections. They have insisted the data will only be used by state health authorities.
“No Australian should have any concerns about downloading this app. It is only for one purpose; to help contact tracing if someone becomes positive,” says Australia’s chief medical officer Brendan Murphy. “I think Australians will rise to the challenge because they have risen to the challenge of distancing, they have risen to the challenge of testing.” The CovidSafe app is based on software used in Singapore. But civil liberties campaigners say it is an invasion of privacy. Pauline Wright from the Law Council of Australia says data protection safeguards are needed. “If there are problems then people need to have the assurance that it will be overseen by an independent authority,” she said.
The government wants at least 40% of Australians — roughly 10 million people — to sign up to make the Covid-19 digital tracking measure effective.
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Seventy-five-year-old Eileen Higa loves to travel and has visited many countries, but she never got a chance to see the Indonesian island of Bali. After moving into Silverado Beverly Place, a memory care community in Los Angeles, she thought she would never have a chance to see exotic places again. But on a sunny day before lunch, Higa’s dream came true, with virtual reality (VR). When she placed a VR headset over her eyes, the four walls around her disappeared, and she was transported to Bali, where a tour guide showed her key sites around the island.“I like to travel, so for me, it’s great,” Higa said.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
The second image: Eileen Higa feels happy and excited after an adventurous, action-filled virtual reality experience. (E. Lee)“Increasingly over the last few years, noticing first minor memory issues and then bigger things and even bigger things,” said Kevin Higa, who remembered his mother getting increasingly isolated at home.“A lot of concerns and a lot of worries with her living alone with the Alzheimer’s and the dementia.”Signs of promise with VREileen Higa is not the only person who has experienced benefits after a session of virtual reality.In a small pilot study with VR company MyndVR, a few participants felt dizzy, but others responded positively to the experience.“It seemed like it improved their mood,” said Kim Butrum, a gerontological nurse practitioner and senior vice president for clinical services at Silverado. “We saw less depression, a little less anxiety later in the day.”
Researchers are looking into the benefits of virtual reality as a tool to fight isolation and loneliness linked to physical and mental conditions such as cognitive decline. Studies have found social isolation to be associated with a higher risk of mortality. VR for seniors during the pandemicFeelings of loneliness and social isolation could be exacerbated during the pandemic. Older adults are believed to be at a higher risk of life-threatening complications if infected with COVID-19. As a result, many senior living facilities have been on lockdown, not allowing visitors inside and limiting activities in the facilities to protect the residents. MyndVR is donating VR headsets to senior living communities across the U.S., along with access to its library of content for a year to keep seniors engaged.The communities see VR as a way of treating the symptoms of dementia without having to use antipsychotic drugs, which come with side effects including stiffness, a higher tendency of falling, abnormal movements and confusion. Could VR improve quality of life for seniors? Butrum said the possibility is there. “We’re not sure where it’s (VR) going to lead, and that’s why we’re excited to be moving forward with this. “Even to someone living on hospice, what if when they’re in bed and maybe too frail to get up and participate in the life of the community, but that they could see somewhere they went with their loved one and a trip to Paris again. What would that do in terms of improving their quality of life? We do think we’re going to see impact.”Eileen Higa liked her virtual reality experience because it allowed her to do an activity she otherwise would not be able to do. Through the magic of VR, Higa can continue to experience new things and travel to exotic places in this next chapter of her life.
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Amazon.com Inc is piloting the use of video conference calls to verify the identity of merchants who wish to sell goods on its websites, in a new plan to counter fraud without in-person meetings in the pandemic, the company said on Sunday. The world’s largest online retailer has long faced scrutiny over how it polices counterfeits and allegedly unsafe products on its platform. Fakes have frustrated top labels like Apple Inc and Nike Inc and discouraged some from selling via Amazon at all. Amazon said its pilot began early this year and included in-person appointments with prospective sellers. However, it switched exclusively to video conferencing in February because of social distancing requirements related to the highly contagious coronavirus, which has infected more than 2.9 million people globally. The interview vetting, on top of other risk-screening performed by Amazon, has been piloted with more than 1,000 merchant applicants based in China, the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, Amazon said. The extra scrutiny by Amazon could make it harder for some China-based sellers, who have registered multiple accounts using private internet networks or fake utility bills. China-based merchants accounted for 40% of the top 10,000 Amazon sellers in Europe, according to 2019 research from firm Marketplace Pulse.
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Elderly people are believed to be especially susceptible to the coronavirus. As a result, many senior living facilities have been on lockdown mode, not allowing visitors in order to protect the residents. But experts say this social isolation could lead to feelings of loneliness for many seniors. One virtual reality company, MyndVR, is donating VR headsets to all 50 U.S. states to keep seniors engaged. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports on the potential benefits of a virtual reality experience.
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Outside of rural areas and some medical practices, telemedicine in the U.S. has been slow to catch on. But the pandemic’s social-distancing requirement has accelerated the use of telemedicine worldwide, particularly primary care visits over video chat. Doctor and patient alike are learning that a lot can be accomplished remotely. Michelle Quinn takes a look.
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Google said Thursday it would expand its program of verification of advertisers on its platform as part of an effort to weed out fraud and “bad actors.” The internet giant and global leader in digital advertising said it would start by verifying advertisers in phases in the United States and expand the program globally. The move builds on Google’s efforts launched in 2018 to verify political advertisers with a requirement to indicate where they are located. Google’s action comes amid growing concerns over ads promoting fraud or fake treatment for coronavirus, among other things. “As part of this initiative, advertisers will be required to complete a verification program in order to buy ads on our network,” Google’s ads integrity chief John Canfield said in a blog post. “Advertisers will need to submit personal identification, business incorporation documents or other information that proves who they are and the country in which they operate.” With the change, which will take “a few years” to complete, according to Canfield, users will be able to click on a link to get information about specific advertisers. “This change will make it easier for people to understand who the advertiser is behind the ads they see from Google and help them make more informed decisions when using our advertising controls,” he said. “It will also help support the health of the digital advertising ecosystem by detecting bad actors and limiting their attempts to misrepresent themselves.”
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Apple Inc. plans to sell Mac computers with its own main processors by next year based on the chip designs currently used in its iPhones and iPads, Bloomberg reported Thursday.The iPhone maker is working on three Mac processors based on the A14 processor in its next iPhone, suggesting the company will transition more of its Mac lineup away from current supplier Intel Corp., the report added, citing people familiar with the matter.Apple started using Intel’s processors in 2006 and a year later all Mac computers featured its chips. Since then, Intel has made chips for other Apple products such as modem chips for its iPhones.Apple has always relied on outside suppliers for its modem chips, a crucial part that connects devices like the iPhone to wireless data networks.In a bid to make its own chips, Apple bought a majority of Intel’s modem business last July for $1 billion and settled a long legal battle with supplier Qualcomm Inc. over the chipmaker’s patent licensing practices.Apple’s Mac computers generated $7.16 billion in revenue in the last reported quarter while Intel’s PC unit that includes modem chip sales recorded $10 billion in sales in the last quarter.Apple was planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, Bloomberg reported in April 2018.Apple and Intel did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comments.
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Zoom Video Communications Inc. said Wednesday it was upgrading the encryption features on its video conferencing app to quell safety concerns as its users surged by 50 percent in the past three weeks.Zoom now has over 300 million daily users after adding 100 million in the last 22 days, the company said, even as it faces a barrage of criticism from cyber security experts and users alike over bugs in its codes and the lack of end-to-end encryption of its chat sessions.The use of Zoom has soared with corporate offices, political parties, school districts, organizations and millions across the world working from home after lockdowns were enforced to slow the spread of the coronavirus.The app’s issues, including “Zoombombing” incidents where uninvited guests crash meetings, led to several companies, schools and governments to stop using the platform.In response, the company said it would be rolling out a new version of the app, Zoom 5.0 within the week.The company, which competes with Microsoft Teams and Cisco’s Webex has also launched a 90-day plan to improve the app and appointed former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos as an adviser.Zoom said it had made several changes to its user interface, including offering password protection and giving more controls to meeting hosts to check unruly participants.To account for criticism that the company had routed some data through Chinese servers, Zoom said an account admin can now choose data center regions for their meetings.Zoom shares closed up nearly 5 percent at $150.25 on Wednesday.
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Far-right computer hackers have published nearly 25,000 email addresses allegedly belonging to several major organizations fighting the coronavirus pandemic, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the World Bank.The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activities, has yet to confirm the addresses are genuine but said that the hackers posted the email addresses across far-right messaging and chat sites, as well as Twitter, this week.“Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic,” SITE Executive Director Rita Katz said. “The distribution of these alleged email credentials was just another part of a monthslong initiative across the far right to weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic.”It is unclear where the hackers got the email addresses. Other victims of the hacks include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Gates Foundation; and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research center in the Chinese city where the COVID-19 outbreak began in December.While those affected by the security breach did not comment on the specifics of the case, NIH and the Gates Foundation both said they consistently monitor data security and take appropriate action.A Twitter spokeswoman said the company is taking action to remove in bulk any links that send users to far-right websites where the alleged email addresses can be found.An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, told The Washington Post that the WHO’s password security is appalling and that he was able to get into its computer system simply by using email addresses the WHO posted on the internet.“Forty-eight people have ‘password’ as their password,” Potter said, adding that others used their own first name or the word “changeme.”He said the right-wingers may have been able to buy the WHO passwords on what is called the dark web, a part of the internet that is not seen by search engines.Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon College in North Carolina who monitors right-wing extremism online, said neo-Nazis and white supremacists are looking to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to stir up violence, chaos and anti-Semitism, hoping it will all lead to a collapse of society and a white power takeover.“The fantasizing about it is not limited. They are really doing that to a great extent — openly fantasizing about how this is the event they’ve been waiting for, this is going to bring about the societal collapse they all hope for … bringing down infrastructure and so on. That’s all fantasy/hopefulness on their part.”Squire said the password hack may be part of an effort to get people to read the WHO or Gates Foundation emails to look for what the extremists believe are conspiracies surrounding the pandemic, including far-right theories that the coronavirus was created and deliberately released from the Chinese or that COVID-19 is part of a Jewish plot.Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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France’s parliament votes next week on plans to use a controversial tracing app to help fight the coronavirus, as the country eyes easing its lockdown next month.French Digital Affairs Minister Cedric O says the downloadable app would notify smartphone users when they cross people with COVID-19, helping authorities track and reduce the spread of the pandemic.In a video on the ruling party’s Facebook page, O said the so-called “Stop COVID” app will fully respect people’s liberties, and will be completely voluntary and anonymous. It also will be temporary — lasting only as long as the pandemic, he added.A man rides his bike in an empty street during a nationwide confinement to counter the COVID-19 in Paris, April 21, 2020.The government wants to launch the app on May 11, the date it has set to begin easing a two-month lockdown in the country. It initially announced a parliamentary debate on the technology, but that’s been changed to a vote, after major pushback from lawmakers.The app’s critics include ruling party member Guillaume Chiche, who told French TV the app would reveal people’s health status and lead to discrimination and exclusion.He’s not the only one worried.”We think that it is very dangerous for the government to say to French people that the solution will be this kind of application,” said Benoit Piedallu, a member of La Quadrature du Net, an advocacy group defending digital rights and freedoms.The potential problems he sees range from chances the app could infringe on individual liberties, to whether it would actually work effectively.”We think that the digital application is not the correct answer to this problem,” Piedallu said. “The government should buy masks, the government should open new hospitals. … There are a lot of other solutions than an application.”A recent poll showed eight in 10 French respondents said they would be willing to download the app. But Piedallu believes the numbers of those actually using it will likely be much smaller, and many seniors —who are among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus — don’t have smartphones.France isn’t the only European country working on tracing apps and sparking similar rights debates, including in neighboring Germany. Reports say the French government is also pushing Apple to allow the app to work on its iPhones without built-in privacy measures.
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The CCTV footage from a Dutch business park shows a man in a black cap pouring the contents of a white container at the base of a cellular radio tower. Flames burst out as the man jogs back to his Toyota to flee into the evening.
It’s a scene that’s been repeated dozens of times in recent weeks in Europe, where conspiracy theories linking new 5G mobile networks and the coronavirus pandemic are fueling arson attacks on cell towers.
Popular beliefs and conspiracy theories that wireless communications pose a threat have long been around, but the global spread of the virus at the same time that countries were rolling out fifth generation wireless technology has seen some of those false narratives amplified.
Officials in Europe and the U.S. are watching the situation closely and pushing back, concerned that attacks will undermine vital telecommunications links at a time they’re most needed to deal with the pandemic.
“I’m absolutely outraged, absolutely disgusted, that people would be taking action against the very infrastructure that we need to respond to this health emergency,” Stephen Powis, medical director of the National Health Service in England, said in early April.
Some 50 fires targeting cell towers and other equipment have been reported in Britain this month, leading to three arrests. Telecom engineers have been abused on the job 80 times, according to trade group Mobile UK, making the U.K. the nucleus of the attacks. Photos and videos documenting the attacks are often overlaid with false commentary about COVID-19. Some 16 have been torched in the Netherlands, with attacks also reported in Ireland, Cyprus, and Belgium.
Posts threatening to attack phone masts were receiving likes on Facebook. One post in an anti-vaccine group on April 12 shared a photo of a burned phone mast with the quote, “Nobody wants cancer & covid19. Stop trying to make it happen or every pole and mobile store will end up like this one.”
The trend received extra attention in Britain when a tower supplying voice and data traffic to a Birmingham field hospital treating coronavirus patients was among those targeted.
“It’s heart-rending enough that families cannot be there at the bedside of loved ones who are critically ill,” Nick Jeffery, CEO of wireless carrier Vodafone UK, said on LinkedIn. “It’s even more upsetting that even the small solace of a phone or video call may now be denied them because of the selfish actions of a few deluded conspiracy theorists.”
False narratives around 5G and the coronavirus have been shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media. They vary widely from claims that the coronavirus is a coverup for 5G deployment to those that say new 5G installations have created the virus.
“To be concerned that 5G is somehow driving the COVID-19 epidemic is just wrong,” Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health who chaired a World Health Organization committee that researched cell phone radiation and cancer. “I just don’t find any plausible way to link them.”
Anti-5G activists are undeterred.
Susan Brinchman, director of the Center for Electrosmog Prevention, a nonprofit campaigning against “environmental electromagnetic pollution,” says that people have a right to be concerned about 5G and links to COVID-19. “The entire 5G infrastructure should be dismantled and turned off,” she said by email.
But there’s no evidence that wireless communications – whether 5G or earlier versions – harm the immune system, said Myrtill Simko, scientific director of SciProof International in Sweden, who has spent decades researching the matter.
The current wave of 5G theories dates back to January, when a Belgian doctor suggested a link to COVID-19. Older variations were circulating before that, mostly revolving around cellphone radiation causing cancer, spreading on Reddit forums, Facebook pages and YouTube channels. Even with daily wireless use among vast majority of adults, the National Cancer Institute has not seen an increase in brain tumors.
The theories gained momentum in 2019 from Russian state media outlets, which helped push them into U.S. domestic conversation, disinformation experts say.
Ryan Fox, who tracks disinformation as chief innovation officer at AI company Yonder, said he noticed an abnormal spike last year in mentions around 5G across Russian state media, with most of the narratives playing off people’s fears around 5G and whether it could cause cancer.
“Were they the loudest voice at that time and did they amplify this conspiracy enough that it helped fuel its long-term success? Yes,” he said.
The conspiracy theories have also been elevated by celebrities including actor Woody Harrelson who shared a video claiming people in China were taking down a 5G tower. It was actually a Hong Kong “smart lamppost” cut down by pro-democracy protesters in August over China surveillance fears. British TV host Eamonn Holmes gave credence to the theories on a talk show, drawing a rebuke from regulators.
“I want to be very clear here,” European Commission spokesman Johannes Bahrke said Friday, as the arson toll rose daily. “There is no geographic or any other correlation between the deployment of 5G and the outbreak of the virus.”
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Australia says Facebook and Google will soon have to pay news outlets for their content. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced Monday that the government’s watchdog group, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, will unveil a mandatory code of conduct by July that will address the disparity between news outlets and internet giants when it comes to online advertising revenue. Facebook and Google receive nearly all online advertising spent in Australia. The new rules are being undertaken after 18 months of talks with the U.S. tech companies over a voluntary code of conduct failed to yield an agreement. Australia would be the third western country in the world to impose such a plan, following similar moves by Spain and France. Australian media companies have lost millions of dollars in advertising revenue in just the last month alone thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. Facebook issued a statement that it was “disappointed” by the government’s decision, noting that it had begun a multi-million dollar investment in Australia’s news industry, while Google said it will continue to work with Australian news outlets, the ACCC and government to develop a code of conduct.
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A senior cybersecurity official with the FBI said on Thursday that foreign government hackers have broken into companies conducting research into treatments for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.FBI Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz told participants in an online panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute that the bureau had recently seen state-backed hackers poking around a series of health care and research institutions.”We certainly have seen reconnaissance activity, and some intrusions, into some of those institutions, especially those that have publicly identified themselves as working on COVID-related research,” she said.Ugoretz said it made sense for institutions working on promising treatments or a potential vaccine to tout their work publicly. However, she said, “The sad flipside is that it kind of makes them a mark for other nation-states that are interested in gleaning details about what exactly they’re doing and maybe even stealing proprietary information that those institutions have.”Ugoretz said that state-backed hackers had often targeted biopharmaceutical industry but said “it’s certainly heightened during this crisis.” She did not name specific countries or identify targeted organizations.”Medical research organizations and those who work for them should be vigilant against threat actors seeking to steal intellectual property or other sensitive data related to America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Bill Evanina, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. “Now is the time to protect the critical research you’re conducting.”The FBI declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had no immediate comment.
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Like so many other workers around the world affected by a COVID-19 lockdown, the team of scientists that operates the U.S. space agency (NASA) probe Curiosity — currently on the surface of Mars — has been forced to do its work from home. Since March 20, the team, normally based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, has been forced to direct the rover while working separately from their homes. Programming each sequence of actions for the rover may involve 20 or so people developing and testing commands in one place while chatting with dozens of others located elsewhere. In anticipation of what they would need to make that happen from home, the team assembled headsets, monitors and other equipment in advanced. Some adaptations were needed as well. Rover operators rely on special three-dimensional goggles to help them drive Curiosity over the Martian landscape. But those can only be run using JPL computers, so researchers were forced to rely on simple 3D glasses, similar to the kind you might get at a 3D movie, to view images on laptops. The team found that it could do its job using multiple video conferences and messaging apps. Two days after they set up remotely, the team directed Curiosity to drill for a rock sample at a Martian location called “Edinburgh.” Science operations team chief Carrie Bridge says she still checks in on the team to make sure things are running smoothly, but does so virtually, calling into as many as four videoconferences at the same time.
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When COVID-19 hit Washington, D.C., and health officials said people had to stay 2 meters apart, Broad Branch Market owner Tracy Stannard knew it meant an end to business as usual.Customers had been packing the store to stock up.”We realized that it was getting a little too risky to have so many people in the market,” Stannard said. “We wanted to keep people outside.”But she also wanted to keep selling groceries.So she turned to Starship Technologies’ delivery robots.”The bots seemed like a great option,” she said.At a time when human contact is considered a health hazard, robots may be more useful than ever. Though their potential is huge, robots are not quite ready to take on the role, experts said.WATCH: Delivery robotsSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – A cargo-carrying robot called the Gita sits near a waterfront park on Nov. 11, 2019, in Boston.Robot deliveries are only available in a few small areas where the sidewalks and streets aren’t too bumpy and the local authorities don’t mind letting them share the pavement. There are also plenty of other ways to have stuff delivered, Burnstein said.Dirty and dangerousRobots have always been best-suited for dirty and dangerous work, he said, and the COVID-19 pandemic is providing some new opportunities.Disinfecting robots are zapping germs in a Belgian hospital and spraying disinfectant in the Hong Kong subway.”If you are in a hospital or office or a warehouse, you probably would like to have a robot do the disinfecting so that people don’t have to go in there and do that,” Burnstein said. “(The robot) makes it safe before the people come into work.”Robots are helping health workers stay healthy by limiting their interactions with sick patients.They are delivering food and medicine in India and Thailand.In Italy, a robot with a camera and touchscreen sits by a patient’s bedside, keeping an eye on them so nurses can keep their distance. Limited applicationsBut these remain isolated examples. Experts say robots could be doing much more.”There’s so much potential you can do here,” Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Howie Choset said. “Unfortunately, we have not had the resources to develop robots that are needed for this particular pandemic.”Choset said interest in developing tools waxes and wanes with the latest crisis. For example, he said, his research group developed a snake-like robot that could move through tight spaces to search for victims in collapsed buildings. It helped the Red Cross in Mexico City after the 2017 earthquake.”But we were doing that on a shoestring budget. That robot, no pun intended, was on its last legs” until the earthquake hit, he said. Then, “everybody wanted that robot. And then a couple of weeks after that, people forgot.”Choset said the robot needs more work, but it’s been hard to find the funding.It’s not just academics. The robotics industry as a whole is struggling.”I’m seeing robotics companies shut down, even in the last month, but particularly in the last year, because they were too early for the markets,” said Andra Keay, managing director of trade group Silicon Valley Robotics.Investors are looking for big returns fast, but many companies are not making money yet. It may be 10 or 15 years before they perfect their technology and business models.”We really needed patient capital in this new wave of robotics,” she said.For now, however, these futuristic workers remain in the future.”Yes, this is robots’ moment,” Choset said, “but we’re going to make do with what we have.”
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U.S. lawmakers and rights groups are raising concerns about privacy protections and civil liberties as health authorities study China, South Korea and other nations for insights into deploying big data in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, the United States has made limited use of available data to fight the outbreak. Instead of using cell phone location data to track down individuals exposed to the virus, public health officials have relied on such data to monitor trends and hot spots. But once the number of new COVID-19 cases levels off and the Trump administration and governors move to lift lockdowns and other social distancing measures, the contact tracing techniques used with varying degrees of success in other countries are likely to gain currency in the U.S.
Contact tracing is a public health procedure of identifying people who have come into contact with an infected person and follow-up gathering of additional information on these people. Jennifer Granick, the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said contact tracing could be useful when testing for exposure to the virus becomes more widely available. But she warned that any use of phone records must be transparent and voluntary, and the data must be destroyed once the crisis is over.“When data collection is useful for an important public good, we have to make sure we can protect privacy as much as possible and get effective use of the tool or the data,” Granick said during a press call with reporters last week. In the two years since the European Union implemented a landmark privacy regulation known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers have been pressing for similar protections for American consumers. Now, the heightened focus on the use of data in the fight against the COVID-19 virus has pushed concerns about privacy protections to the forefront. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., asks a question during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.On Thursday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation convened the first congressional “paper hearing” via the internet on big data and the coronavirus. In his opening statement, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the committee chairman, said any use of personal data must come with privacy protections.
“Reducing privacy risks begins with understanding how consumers’ location data — and any other information — is being collected when tracking compliance with social distancing measures,” Wicker said. “Equally important is understanding how that data is anonymized to remove all personally identifiable information and prevent individuals from being re-identified.”Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., asks a question during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State, the top Democrat on the panel, warned against “hasty decisions that will sweep up massive, unrelated datasets.” “And we must guard against vaguely defined and non-transparent government initiatives with our personal data,” Cantwell said. “Because rights and data surrendered temporarily during an emergency can become very difficult to get back.” Last year, both Wicker and Cantwell introduced privacy bills that would give American consumers privacy protections similar to the EU’s GDPR.
The U.S. drive to make greater use of cell phone location data to contain the virus stems in part from similar efforts in China, South Korea, Singapore, Israel and elsewhere. People wearing face masks look at their cellphones at Beijing Capital International Airport, as the country is hit by an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, in Beijing, China March 16, 2020.In China, the government collected cell phone location data on millions of residents with the goal of identifying individuals exposed to a person infected with the virus. Using the infected people’s location records, the government then identified, tested and, if necessary, quarantined people. This was one of several methods China used to bring the virus outbreak under control. “This kind of tracking is part of what China has been doing in its seemingly successful effort to suppress the virus, which has fed the appeal of such tracking,” the ACLU said in a white paper released last week. In the paper, the ACLU highlighted several problems with this method.For one, cell site location information and GPS data are not accurate enough to pinpoint whether two people were recently in “close contact” with each other. As the Chinese discovered, cell site location data “generated too many false positives,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU. GPS data “is probably good enough to tell you that you were near a mosque or an abortion clinic … but not good enough to figure out who you were close enough to potentially be exposed to COVID,” Stanley said. Other problems: computer algorithms are not always reliable and cell phone location data are scattered among “a whole ecosystem of privacy-invading companies,” Stanley said. Lee Nak-yon, South Korean former prime minister and a ruling Democratic Party candidate for the parliament, wears a mask to prevent contracting the coronavirus disease as he poses for a selfie in Seoul, April 10, 2020.In South Korea, officials took a different approach to deploying big data. They used an infected person’s cell phone location data to retrace his or her steps and then published their “anonymized” or anonymous location histories through phone apps and websites. Residents who learned through the apps they may have been exposed to the virus were quickly tested. But while effective in containing the outbreak, South Korean authorities “are not doing a good job anonymizing the data,” the ACLU said. “One alert informed the public, for example, of a ’43-year-old man, resident of Nowon district’ who was at his work in Mapo district attending a sexual harassment class,” the report said. In the U.S., authorities have shunned such intrusive techniques. Instead, they have largely relied on aggregate cell phone location data to monitor trends and people’s movements in and out of hot spots. Experts say such aggregate location data usually don’t present privacy concerns as they involve information about large groups of people rather than individual location histories. Yet contact tracing by both individuals and health authorities is likely to grow in use once the COVID-19 infection curve is flattened and the virus becomes more geographically localized. Contact tracing apps use a combination of self-reported health status and location history and allow users to avoid exposure to the virus. FILE – A Google logo is seen at the company’s offices in Granary Square, London, Nov. 1, 2018.Apple and Google on Friday announced plans to develop a joint contact tracing app using Bluetooth technology. The app allows users to report their positive diagnosis and to receive alerts when they’re in close contact with an infected person. Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, warned that digital contact tracing of the kind used in Singapore, South Korea and Israel has significant potential for “unintended consequences, misuse, and encroachment on privacy and civil liberties.” To the extent that contact tracing efforts have been effective in these countries, “they have not been voluntary, self-reported, or involved self-help,” Calo said in written testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee. “Rather, public officials have forced compliance and dispatched investigators to interview and, if necessary, forcibly quarantine exposed individuals. I see it as an open question whether Americans would be comfortable with this level of state expenditure and intervention.”
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The internet is playing a special role in the coronavirus pandemic, allowing billions of people sheltered at home to communicate. A global event is underway online to seek creative ways to deal with the crisis. Mike O’Sullivan has more on the Hack the Crisis movement and its worldwide Global Hack this weekend.
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The Department of Defense has issued new guidance on the use of the popular videoconferencing application Zoom following a week-old FBI warning about security issues and a FILE- A Zoom app logo is displayed on a smartphone in Arlington, Virginia, March 30, 2020.The federal government has been no different, despite an FBI announcement April 1 that hackers could exploit weaknesses in videoconferencing software systems like Zoom to “steal sensitive information, target individuals and businesses performing financial transactions, and engage in extortion.”The security concern is much greater than “Zoom bombing” attacks reported by users whose chats have been infiltrated by hackers shouting profanities or posting lewd images.Experts say the teleconferencing app may introduce security risks not only to government employees during Zoom sessions but also to data that reside on government computers.“If there are vulnerabilities, the app can jeopardize the security of data on the computer on which it is installed, or even potentially on other computers on the same network,” Joseph Steinberg, a leading cybersecurity expert and the author of Cybersecurity for Dummies, told VOA. “Such vulnerabilities have been discovered — and more may exist.”Some unaware of risksVOA reporting after the FBI warning on April 1 showed that Zoom remained a popular videoconferencing application for U.S. government employees from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, not all of whom were aware of its potential risks.A Zoom spokeswoman said Thursday that Zoom takes user security “extremely seriously.”“A large number of global institutions ranging from the world’s largest financial services companies to leading telecommunications providers, government agencies, universities and others have done exhaustive security reviews of our user, network and datacenter layers and confidently selected Zoom for complete deployment,” the spokeswoman said.
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With billions locked down at home by COVID-19, the internet is a lifeline, allowing people to work, study and share ideas online.It also presents opportunities, say the organizers of the Global Hack, a virtual gathering of hundreds of thousands of people in 50 nations taking place Thursday through Saturday, April 9-11. Prizes for the best ideas for new platforms, applications and innovations will be awarded April 12.Hackathons are usually mass gatherings of software developers and graphic designers who tackle problems in a competitive setting. With the Global Hack now under way, creative teams are working remotely to come up with solutions to problems raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.“We gather people together, with very different skills, different competencies,” said Kai Isand, a leader of the technology collective Accelerate Estonia and head organizer for this weekend’s Global Hack.“We brainstorm ideas, and we actually build them into working prototypes,” she said. A hackathon March 13-15 created a map of COVID-19 cases in Estonia, the country in northern Europe where the online movement Hack the Crisis started. Other teams developed a health questionnaire and a site to link volunteers with medical backgrounds. FILE – An Estonian police officer checks documents at the border crossing point as Estonia reintroduces border control and a ban to enter Estonia for foreigners as a preventive measure against the coronavirus in Valga, Estonia, March 17, 2020.Dozens of nations are now involved.“People said we were in lockdown, and we knocked down the lockdown and we felt so connected with everyone,” said Payal Manan Rajpal, who heads Hack the Crisis, India. She said her country has a huge pool of technology talent, and among the innovations that emerged from a recent Indian hackathon was “an AI (artificial intelligence) enabled robot, which will be very helpful to disinfect via UV (ultraviolet) rays in quarantine wards.” The movement has drawn support from the business community and IT sector.Estonia, where the Hack the Crisis movement started, is a nation of 1.3 million people that embraced the digital revolution early, said Viljar Lubi, Estonian vice minister for economic development for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.“We thought we could use IT in order to make our government leaner and smoother and bring it closer to its citizens,” he said.Estonia has pursued the concept of digital government, and in last year’s parliamentary election, 44% of Estonian voters cast their votes online. The Hack the Crisis movement began with a call for creative ideas from an Estonian government official. In response, international startup consultant Calum Cameron made a few phone calls and the concept was hammered out, with organizers quickly securing government backing.Within days, the March 13 online hack was under way.The online movement quickly spread to Latvia, Germany, Belarus and dozens of other countries. “Everybody in the region was thinking about it. Everybody had the same idea, but Estonia was the only country that was ready to actually go,” Cameron said.The online hacks are not just for IT experts, said Isand, of the Global Hack, and they welcome educators, designers, marketers and anyone with ideas. Online mentors include Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Cameron said that for the first time in history, humanity has been able to come together virtually to address a common problem, “and do something about it … using digital, using internet,” to mitigate this and future crises.
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As countries scramble to control the coronavirus pandemic with stay-at-home orders, millions of people around the world have turned to the internet to work, study and stay informed. Monday, global internet volume was up more than 40% since the beginning of the year, according to FILE – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during his news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019.In his role with the U.N., Kaye has been mandated to gather information related to alleged violations of freedom of expression. Kaye investigated whether a video file allegedly sent to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from a phone belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman installed a program that was used to spy on the billionaire. Bezos owns The Washington Post, and some experts have said they believe the hacking of his phone was an effort to influence the paper’s coverage of Saudi Arabia. The surveillance played out over months and involved the surreptitious transfer of data from Bezos’s phone, the Associated Press reported. Kaye called on the U.S. and other authorities to investigate allegations that the Crown Prince was involved, Reuters reported in January. Saudi authorities have rejected the allegations. “Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos’ phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out,” the Saudi Embassy in Washington said in a January tweet. Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos’ phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out.— Saudi Embassy (@SaudiEmbassyUSA) January 22, 2020Karen Attiah, the global opinions editor at the Post, who recruited Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, said she weighs the risks of messaging platforms when using them in her work. “I don’t have sensitive conversations, work or otherwise, on WhatsApp,” she told VOA. Attiah said she is cautious when sharing “personal or political information with sources who are at risk from their governments.” ‘Trusting somebody who you shouldn’t be trusting’ Ostrowski’s company works with organizations to alert them of potential loopholes in their software. Tools like WhatsApp, for example, can allow users to share video files. But files can include malignant code that secretly monitors and transmits data. Most tools offer end-to-end encryption, a kind of technology that ensures communications remain private, making it difficult for third parties, including governments, to eavesdrop on conversations. But many emerging security problems center around the application itself, not encryption, Ostrowski told VOA. That means hackers don’t have to break encryption to launch an attack. They merely have to trick the person with whom they’re communicating. “Because [hackers are] crafting it before it’s sent to the other side, the other side is merely responding to something that’s been crafted, after it’s gone through the encryption,” Ostrowski said. “You may be trusting somebody who you shouldn’t be trusting,” he added. Staying safe online takes vigilance, Ostrowski said, especially at moments like the current crisis, when even more aspects of our lives have moved online. Fortunately, staying alert might go a long way toward keeping us safe. “A lot of it is common sense,” Ostrowski said. “Who’s going to look after our privacy is you and I.”This story originated in the Africa Division with reporting contributions from VOA English-to-Africa’s Jackson Mvunganyi in Washington.
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Apple and Google on Friday launched a major joint effort to leverage smartphone technology to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.New software the companies plan to add to phones would make it easier to use Bluetooth wireless technology to track down people who may have been infected by coronavirus carriers. The idea is to help national governments roll out apps for so-called “contact tracing” that will run on iPhones and Android phones alike.The technology works by harnessing short-range Bluetooth signals. Using the Apple-Google technology, contact-tracing apps would gather a record of other phones with which they came into close proximity. Such data can be used to alert others who might have been infected by known carriers of the novel coronavirus, although only in cases where the phones’ owners have installed the apps and agreed to share data with public health authorities.Software developers have already created such apps in countries including Singapore and China to try to contain the pandemic. In Europe, the Czech Republic says it will release such an app after Easter. Britain, Germany and Italy are also developing their own tracing tools.Privacy and civil liberties activists have warned that such apps need to be designed so governments cannot abuse them to track their citizens. Apple and Google said in a joint announcement that user privacy and security were baked into the design of their plan.’Privacy consequences’ Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said she’d be looking closely at the companies’ privacy assurances and for evidence that any health data they collect would be deleted once the emergency was over.”People are dying. We have to save lives. Everyone understands that,” she said. “But at some point, we’re going to have to understand the privacy consequences of this.”Security experts also noted that technology alone cannot effectively track down and identify people who may have been infected by COVID-19 carriers. Such efforts will require other tools and teams of public health care workers to track people in the physical world, they said. In South Korea and China, such efforts have included the use of credit card and public transit records.Given the great need for effective contact tracing — a tool epidemiologists have long employed to contain infectious disease outbreaks — the companies will roll out their changes in two phases. In the first, they will release software in May that lets public health authorities release apps for both Android and iOS phones. In coming months, they will also build this functionality directly into the underlying operating systems.On Friday, the companies released preliminary technical specifications for the effort, which they called “Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing.”
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U.S. military and government employees continue to use the popular videoconferencing application Zoom for official business, despite FBI warnings about privacy and security issues, an action experts fear is increasing the risk of government data breaches. Zoom has seen a surge in activity during the coronavirus pandemic as office workers across the country have turned to the free app to quickly arrange video calls with dozens of participants. The federal government has been no different, despite an FBI announcement April 1 that hackers could exploit weaknesses in videoconferencing software systems like Zoom to “steal sensitive information, target individuals and businesses performing financial transactions, and engage in extortion.” The security concern is much greater than “Zoom CEO Eric Yuan attends the opening bell at Nasdaq as his company holds its IPO, April 18, 2019, in New York.Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in an April 1 blog post that the company was freezing work on new features to focus on fixing its privacy and security problems. In the meantime, VOA reporting shows that Zoom remains one of the most popular videoconferencing applications for U.S. government employees from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, not all of whom are aware of its potential risks. “I’m not aware of any issues with Zoom,” a senior official in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a small group of reporters a day after the FBI guidance was issued. The U.S. defense official said he was using Zoom to videoconference amid the need to social distance, but when pressed by VOA about the potential security risks, the official added that every discussion his team had while on Zoom was “at the unclassified level.” Government employees can use Zoom for Government, a paid tier service that is hosted in a separate cloud authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. It is unclear, however, how many government employees have differentiated between the two services thus far. To date, Zoom remains on the approved list of mobile phone applications for U.S. Department of Defense employees, according to multiple officials. However, one senior defense official said the Pentagon was currently looking into “guidance adjustments” for the application. Multiple employees at the State Department have also been using Zoom for official business. One staff member said he and his colleagues have daily Zoom meetings and have not received any guidance against using the app for internal and external communication. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper last week tweeted about his department’s use of a “Zoom Room.” Be it via “Zoom Room,” WebXing, or VTC, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper gestures during a news conference at the Pentagon, March 5, 2020.Concerns of Chinese cybertheft Scott Stewart, vice president of Stratfor’s Threat Lens and a former diplomatic security service special agent, told VOA a “good portion” of Zoom’s development team is in China, and the videoconferencing company’s failure to use end-to-end encryption could allow an employee under pressure by the Chinese government to access and share private conversations. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has repeatedly said maintaining a military advantage over China is the Pentagon’s “highest priority,” and for years top military officers have warned of China’s use of forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft and cyber-espionage to expand their military capabilities. Steinberg told VOA he would not recommend Zoom use on military or government computers. “Other apps are more time tested,” he said. Nike Ching, Katherine Gypson, Michelle Quinn and Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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