The Smoke Eater For April 15, 2020
App holes, lords of COBOL, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
A young man waits outside a laundromat in Chicago. Photo by Dominic Gwinn
Good evening, this is The Smoke Eater for Wednesday, April 15, 2020, and there's a TV party tonight!
Quick Hit
* Stick this up your app, and say, "AAHHHH" * Praying to the lords of COBOL * The need for speed kills * "I've got culture coming out of my ass!" *
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Over the weekend Google and Apple announced a joint contact tracing effort that would utilize common cellphone hardware to track the spread of the novel coronavirus. The idea is to use a type of bluetooth radio signal to do contact tracing: if your phone comes near a phone owned by a person who's tested positive -- and they've entered that result in an app -- your phone would get an alert. The idea is notably different than the QR code scanning method used by Singapore, the color-coded stalking system the Chinese hacked together and jammed into their existing security apparatus, or the sketchy terrorist tracking GPS system the Israelis retrofitted to keep an eye on everyone. As with all tech, nothing is that simple. [The Vergecast]
Privacy advocates and nerds have already raised red flags. Apple and Google say their system will be designed with a privacy focus, and that there won't be any kind of master list of the infected. Nevertheless, the ALCU has noted politicians proposing these kinds of magic cure-all schemes seem ignorant to the inherent technological limitations, inevitable social stigmas, and the potential violations of civil liberties and human rights.
Additionally, several prominent Democratic senators questioned Apple over its separate contract tracing efforts. Apple responded by saying it wasn't breaking any HIPPA laws because people voluntarily give Apple their medical data. Apple also pinky promised not to use, share, or sell the data for commercial use.
Yesterday Casey Newton wrote that the effectiveness of existing tech-centered tracing methods is not clear because they rely on people volunteering information to companies that have poor records protecting data privacy. Google and Apple have tried to assuage their fears in saying the app will be opt-in, that it will manually push an update to old phones themselves (as opposed to relying on carriers like Verizon or AT&T) and require people to download a specific app, and somehow route alerts through public health agencies. Both have said they will eventually dismantle the network, presumably like the end of that Batman movie.
NPR reports health experts are skeptical these apps can replace the kind of shoe leather detective work that's crucial in monitoring the spread of a virus. Public health officials have called for a massive increase in tracing teams, but that means an exhaustive number of groups headed by epidemiologists in every city to track thousands of interactions a day. Some science bozos wrote a white paper arguing the apps could help mitigate the workload, and the number of mass quarantines, but the results aren't conclusive.
The idea certainly seems less invasive and more reassuring than the method Hong Kong has been using to monitor travelers. Still, there are many ethical questions privacy-conscious westerners should be asking themselves before surrendering even more data to the cloud. And, as Julia Angwin points out in The MarkUp, none of these systems are troll-proof, and making them immune to fuckery would require giving up the kinds of highly personal data advertisers and law enforcement agencies salivate for.
Martin Eiermann argues in Foreign Affairs that the debate between data privacy and public health doesn't have to an argument about the benefits of civil liberties versus human survival. Eiermann maintains that many of the underlying permissions embedded in contact tracing applications should come with sunset clauses, and their use reconsidered every few weeks.
In Other News
Mackenna Kelly writes one of the reasons state unemployment offices are seeing such a clusterfuck is due to their reliance on a very old computer language. Because nerds no longer write in common business-oriented language (COBOL), IT departments in at least half a dozen state unemployment offices have been slow to adapt to the mass of people filing jobless claims. States are desperate for people who actually know the 70-some year-old coding language, and they're trying to yank people out of retirement to unfuck their aging finance computer mainframes. Kelly notes that this has been happening since Y2K due to federal and state legislatures failure to modernize computer equipment, and cites a 2019 GAO report that warned about the financial and security costs in maintaining so-called "legacy systems" with "a dwindling number of people available with the skills needed to support it."
Writing for CSIS, Jude Blanchette has an essay on how China has utilized the COVID-19 crisis to ramp up its roll out of 5G systems in the hope of convincing developing and emerging markets to scoop up their shady hardware. By bundling tracking applications with the hardware, China is hoping to expand its presence in developing countries that have spotty internet coverage. Blanchette argues that the U.S. should similarly utilize the crisis to expand infrastructure projects, like rural broadband, something House Democrats have been arguing in favor of over the several weeks.
Reuters reports the decrease in traffic has led to a dramatic increase in speeding. In cities all over the world, from Los Angeles to New York, London to North Rhine-Westphalia, the mandatory quarantine's have created traffic reductions anywhere between 60 to 90 percent and the empty streets have brought out bored dickheads with lead feet. Police officials caution speeders believing in an illusion of safety are simply making a bad situation worse with their irresponsible and reckless behavior. In a related story, Chicago had a 60 car pile up on the Kennedy Expressway early this morning. Deputy District Fire Chief John Giordano told reporters that ice and snow were a factor before adding, "Vehicles driving at high rates of speed caused the accident."
USA Today has a photo essay about how people all over America have been trying to deal with "social distancing" in the wake of the quarantines. The photos cover small towns, cities, schools, community kitchens, and the upended lives of people in neighborhoods big and small.
One More Thing...
Staring Michael Cane and Steve Martin, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) is a film about con artists ripping off each other in the French Riviera. It's a remake of 1964's "Bedtime Story," which starred David Niven, Marlon Brando, and Shirley Jones. At one point the film had a number of famous names considered for roles that ultimately went to Cane and Martin, including Mick Jagger and David Bowie, John Cleese, Richard Dreyfuss, and Eddie Murphy.
OK, here's a cute critter video: IT'S OMEO!
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