In -working digital surveillance, Rambler disowned Nginx and confused investors Durov

The topic of release is the failure of digital surveillance of sick coronavirus

A month and a half after the introduction of widespread quarantines, the main topic for European countries-and soon for Russia -the question is: how to get out of these quarantines and start a relatively normal life, minimizing the risks of the beginning of the second wave of the epidemic. The only way to prevent it is to identify and isolate the sick as quickly as possible, and in this many countries are counting on a digital “big brother” - a system for monitoring the diseases and tracking their contacts. But they still could not establish their work anywhere except in China.

Singapore: An application that no one wants to install

In mid-March, Singapore was declared almost the only country that managed to prevent the spread of coronavirus-and this despite the fact that Singapore is included in the world three in population density and is the main point of intersection of trade routes in Southeast Asia.

The secret of the success of the Singapore authorities was called the rapid closure of borders, mass testing and surveillance systems that helped monitor potential infected. In the city-state, it was not even necessary to introduce quarantine: it seemed that it would be possible to curb the disease so.

But the joy turned out to be premature: on April 1, there were only 1 thousand infected in Singapore, now there are already 11 thousand. The Singapore authorities made one of the main bets on the TRACETOGETHER application: this is a monitoring system that monitors the location of users in Bluetooth and determines their distance from each other. If a person is in close contact with the confirmed infected, the application signals the user and transfers information to the authorities.

It sounds frightening and inspiring at the same time, but a month has passed since the launch of the application - and in fact it still does not work, writes The Wall Street Journal. The problem is approximately the same as with the accumulation of collective immunity : so that the system of surveillance through Bluetooth works effectively, the application must install at least two -thirds of 5.7 million inhabitants of Singapore. In a month, only 1 million people did this - and this is in a country with a relatively authoritarian regime and rich experience in surveillance of citizens.

People refuse to establish a state application for various reasons: someone believes that there are already enough quarantine measures taken to defeat the epidemic, others are worried about confidentiality and do not want to set programs that will gain access to the unknown volume of data, the WSJ transfers.

But the authorities of other countries considered the experience of Singapore successful: about 50 countries became interested in the application, and the Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany, where such an initiative with an even greater probability, will cause resistance in people, want to launch the application.

Russia: Police is more reliable than technology

In Russia, two similar control systems of contaminated Covid-19 and tracking their contacts were launched at once, but we also have the results of their work, apparently, leave much to be desired.

In early April, the Moscow government developed an application for Social Monitoring smartphones, which was supposed to monitor the observance of quarantine by people with a confirmed diagnosis, as well as those who arrived from countries with a dysfunctional epidemiological situation.

The first pancake came out lumpy . On March 25, the application rolled out to the Google Play store, but the experts immediately found that it requests unlimited access to the data and functions of the smartphone, reports data to the mayor's servers in an unprotected form, and is used by the Estonian service, which transfers the assembled to servers located in Germany. Users brought down the application rating up to 1 out of 5, and on April 1 it disappeared from Google Play.

Instead, the city hall began to distribute “social monitoring” directly to people placed under quarantine - along with free smartphones, the only function of which was the application of the application. The city hall did not report on the results of the work of the system, but the obvious way to bypass the application is to leave the house, leaving a smartphone with the application there - apparently, it is successful: the police detainers are delayed by the police with a regular check of passes. In April, 130 people were detained in Moscow.

But the city hall does not give up. At the end of this week, she released a new version of the application. “So that the user does not have the opportunity to leave the smartphone at home and go out without it, the application at random time sends a push notification with a request for additional confirmation-this will need to be taken a selfie,” the description says.

On April 1, the Ministry of Communications also launched their control system at the federal level. Their movements are monitored by geolocation of SIM cards, the numbers of which are collected from regional authorities. The results of its work are known even less than about the Moscow system - only on April 5, a source in the Ministry of Communications said that with the help of geolocation of the authorities revealed 5 thousand quarantine violators. The Bell did not answer the Ministry of Communications at the request.

Google, Apple and World Transport

Technological giants are also joined by attempts to control coronavirus. On April 10, Apple and Google announced the joint development of tracking technology, which will allow governments of all countries to track the contacts of the infected. It, as in Singapore, will not be used by GPS, but Bluetooth. The companies promised in mid -May to develop an API, which would allow each other to “see” each other with Android and iOS smartphones, which are installed from public health services connected to the project.

This week, the European Commissioner Thierry Breton said that the API will become available in the EU on April 28, that is, from this day, application developers will be able to start setting up their systems.

Unlike the Singapore system, the IT companies promise to not disclose confidential information about users to the authorities: all users will receive identification numbers that are not tied to personal data, and the applications will notify people about possible contacts, but do not transmit information about them to the authorities, the developers promise.

The question is how many users voluntarily agree to put applications developed by the authorities of their countries. If they are not enough, then the whole system, exactly like Singapore Traacetogether, will be ineffective. In addition, it is unclear how even such an anonymous platform actually protects users: even if Google and Apple do not collect data from users to local authorities, it is not the fact that it is not tried to do applications themselves, as the same Russian “social monitoring”, which in beta asked users to access almost all the data contained on the smartphone.

But the installation of special applications will be required only at the first stage: at the second Google and Apple are prepared at the end of 2020 to release their OS, which will allow you to track people's contacts automatically. Applications from national Ministry of Health at this stage will only need to provide the user with information about what to do if the contact happened. But even with such architecture, one can still guarantee users one hundred percent confidentiality, critics of the system believe .

NEWS

Rambler has disowned Nginx

A loud criminal case , on the initiative of Rambler shareholders at the world's most popular Nginx web server, received a new turn. Rambler, whose claim transferred by Lynwood, caused searches for the founders of NGINX, refused his complaints - although the rights of claims in the case still belong to the same Lynwood, which is associated with Alexander Mamut. Rambler even turned to the bodies with a request to terminate the case - this was one of the tasks, back in December, set by his board of directors, set before the holding. It is a pity that all this in reality helps Nginx himself: Lynwood will prevent nothing to continue to insist on the prosecution, and the bodies can continue to close the investigation into the criminal case, which simply at the request of the applicants, in fact, cannot be closed. But now we can safely say that Rambler (and even more so his partner and shareholder Sberbank) have nothing to do with the case.

Ton investors in confusion

Before the promised launch of the Ton blockchain platform, the Brothers Paul and Nikolai Durovs are left less than a week: until April 30, they promised investors to launch a project or return the money. But the team’s plans are still unknown: the trial of Telegram in the United States is delayed, the intermediate decision was made in favor of the SEC, and investors have not yet received any new proposals from the creators of Telegram. Most believe that “Pavel will come up with something,” part is ready to pick up money in order to at least partially recapture the costs of investments, taking into account the jumping course. But what exactly the Durov brothers will do and what Telegram will live on if they have to return the money until no one understands.

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