Communications of the ACM
France Says Apple Bluetooth Policy Is Blocking Virus Tracker
France said Apple's Bluetooth policy is delaying a government contact-tracing application designed to contain the coronavirus.
Credit: Michael Short/Bloomberg
France said Apple's Bluetooth policy is delaying a government contact-tracing application designed to contain the coronavirus.
Apple's operating system prevents contact-tracing apps employing Bluetooth from constantly running in the background if that data is going to be moved off the device.
French digital minister Cedric O said this constraint, designed to protect user privacy, is hindering the virus tracker that France aims to deploy when the country starts lifting restrictions on movement.
Apple and Google are creating their own technology for contact-tracing apps, which uses smartphones' Bluetooth connections and lets users retain data on their handsets.
France and the European Union prefer to feed the data to a central server overseen by state health services, which would notify users if they come into contact with a person infected by the virus; however, more than 300 academics in more than 20 countries endorsed the approach of Apple and Google.
From Bloomberg
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