This WP article has highlighted important problems with Gapple's contact tracing efforts & quotes some of my mentors in tech policy. But, from my vantage point, it creates (unintentionally) a false dichotomy between national sovereignty and Gapple (1/x)
washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
My gut response to the first Gapple announcement was not only lack of sovereignty but also democratic process. Sovereignty is not sufficient give the complexity of the relationship between governments & Gapple (2/x)
radicalai.org/e5-seda-gurses
radicalai.org/e5-seda-gurses
To this day most app initiatives are techno-centric and top down and have side-stepped health authorities as well as civil society. Governments across Europe got pushback for this, and some changed course, e.g., Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. (3/x)
Specifically, the article fails to address the complexity around sovereignty issues:
(1) Extending Gapple's existing computational infrastructure (phones in our pockets + backends in clouds) with proximity measurements is itself a big risk for democracy & sovereignty. (4/x)
(1) Extending Gapple's existing computational infrastructure (phones in our pockets + backends in clouds) with proximity measurements is itself a big risk for democracy & sovereignty. (4/x)
(2) Maybe it is due to its US centricity, but the article ignores the tensions caused by decisions made by national governments on a global computational infrastructure, and how that might impact governance of tech across the globe. (5/x)
(3) Conflates the interests of scientists who need data for their models with those of health authorities, and ignores issues with quality of BT and GPS data. (6/x)
(4) Underplays the possibility of social engineering that is inherent to engineering Proximity Tracing apps and how governments and Gapple share (and maybe are even competing towards) that interest. (7/x)
(5) And makes it seem like Gapple limits all COVID-19 apps, when they have given health authorities the sole control for putting all sorts of hopefully well intended and well evaluated apps on the app store (including the ability to collect location data) (8/x)
So, yes, there is a sovereignty issue and I am pleased to see an article that addresses Gapple's infrastructural & pocket power -- the ability of Gapple to expand across institutions and countries by virute of the phones they control.(9/x)
For sure, that sovereignty discussion must include resisting Gapple's plans to push their tracing functionality into the Operating System (OS) -- meaning with a global update, most iOS & Android phones may come to integrate the tracing functionality. (10/x)
Yet, pushing back should not require subscribing to dominant false dichotomies of COVID-19:
(i) accept lockdown or extended surveillance,
(ii) either promote national sovereignty or Gapple. (11/x)
(i) accept lockdown or extended surveillance,
(ii) either promote national sovereignty or Gapple. (11/x)
We need arguments that do not blindly embrace problematic state practices in the pushback against Gapple and Microsoft and Amazon and Salesforce and Palantir... and their global infrastructural power. (12/x)
And, as many articles, this piece also invokes "authoritarian countries" elsewhere that are the problem. This is a colonial/imperialist argument. (13/x)
The UK, US & France have terrible track records in surveillance as well as entanglements in global empires. Discussions on sovereignty need to be cognizant of the historical power asymmetries and the urgency for international solidarity in measures for a global pandemic. (14/x)
I am happy to discuss further. And, my disclaimer: Much of what I write are my personal opinions based on observations from (but not limited to) being part of the DP3T project. You can find the aims of the project here: github.com/DP-3T/document… (15/15)
