Apple and Google announced a system for tracking the spread of the new coronavirus, allowing users to share data through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions and approved apps from health organizations.

The nascent partnership between Apple and Google will use contact tracing software, first in an app voluntarily downloaded, but then it will be built into the operating system software of evert iPhone and Android on the face of the earth. Ready yet to all hold hands by the campfire, make some s’mores and sing Kumbaya? You better be. Mark Of The Beast on deck.

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Revelation 13:16-18 (KJB)

And thus tightens the net around the people of the whole earth, that great and terrible Internet on which the entire world is run. Oh, what’s that? You didn’t know that the WWW is the platform of the coming Mark of the Beast system? What? nobody told you that the numeric value of the letter ‘W’ in the Hebrew alphabet is ‘6’? The letter ‘W’ in Hebrew is ‘Vav’ and it is the 6th letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Mind. Blown.

Wakey-wakey, little ones, your house is on fire, time to fly. Flight #777 on Titus213 Airlines has engines on and doors closing. Webs are made to catch things, don’t let it catch you.

Both Apple and Google are building a coronavirus tracking system into iOS and Android system software using contact tracing

FROM THE VERGE: The new system, which is laid out in a series of documents and white papers, would use short-range Bluetooth communications to establish a voluntary contact-tracing network, keeping extensive data on phones that have been in close proximity with each other. Official apps from public health authorities will get access to this data, and users who download them can report if they’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19. The system will also alert people who download them to whether they were in close contact with an infected person.

Apple and Google will introduce a pair of iOS and Android APIs in mid-May and make sure these health authorities’ apps can implement them. During this phase, users will still have to download an app to participate in contact-tracing, which could limit adoption. But in the months after the API is complete, the companies will work on building tracing functionality into the underlying operating system, as an option immediately available to everyone with an iOS or Android phone.

Apple and Google partner on COVID-19 contact tracing technology

Contact tracing — which involves figuring out who an infected person has been in contact with and trying to prevent them from infecting others — is one of the most promising solutions for containing COVID-19, but using digital surveillance technology to do it raises massive privacy concerns and questions about effectiveness. Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about tracking users with phone data, arguing that any system would need to be limited in scope and avoid compromising user privacy.

JOHN MACARTHUR IS DEAD WRONG SAYING THAT TRIBULATION SAINTS CAN TAKE THE MARK OF THE BEAST AND STILL BE FORGIVEN AND GO TO HEAVEN, THEY CAN’T

Unlike some other methods — like, say, using GPS data — this Bluetooth plan wouldn’t track people’s physical location. It would basically pick up the signals of nearby phones at 5-minute intervals and store the connections between them in a database. If one person tests positive for the novel coronavirus, they could tell the app they’ve been infected, and it could notify other people whose phones passed within close range in the preceding days.

The system also takes a number of steps to prevent people from being identified, even after they’ve shared their data. While the app regularly sends information out over Bluetooth, it broadcasts an anonymous key rather than a static identity, and those keys cycle every 15 minutes to preserve privacy. Even once a person shares that they’ve been infected, the app will only share keys from the specific period in which they were contagious.

Crucially, there is no centrally accessible master list of which phones have matched, contagious or otherwise. That’s because the phones themselves are performing the cryptographic calculations required to protect privacy. The central servers only maintain the database of shared keys, rather than the interactions between those keys. READ MORE

Smartphone-Assisted COVID-19 Digital Surveillance Contact Tracing

Contact tracing is something you are going to hear a lot about as our lockdown continues, time for all of us to learn what contact tracing is. Short answer? It’s a digital surveillance system. Surprised?

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“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJV)

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While it defies U.S. government, Apple abides by China’s orders — and reaps big rewards

EDITOR’S NOTE: Tim Cook, the openly gay CEO of Apple, is a two-faced hypocrite who denies the FBI access in America to the data on the phones of murderous Muslim terrorists while at the same time handing over Chinese iPhone user data on a silver platter to the Chinese government. If user data is so sacrosanct, why are Chinese iPhone users afforded no privacy at all? And why is Apple protecting Muslim terrorists? Bad Apple.

Apple Inc. has come out swinging in its pitched battle with the government on its home turf. But when it comes to its second-largest market, China, the Cupertino, Calif., company has been far more accommodating.

Since the iPhone was officially introduced in China seven years ago, Apple has overcome a national security backlash there and has censored apps that wouldn’t pass muster with Chinese authorities. It has moved local user data onto servers operated by the state-owned China Telecom and submits to security audits by Chinese authorities.

The approach contrasts with Apple’s defiant stance against the FBI, which is heaping pressure on the company to decrypt an iPhone that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

The years-long strategy in China is paying off at a crucial time. While sales of Apple products have flatlined or declined in the U.S., Europe and Japan, business in the company’s greater China region continues to soar — to a record $59 billion last year. The Asian giant surpassed the U.S. last year as the No. 1 buyer of iPhones and could one day be the largest market for Apple Pay, the mobile payment platform that was rolled out for Chinese consumers last week.

But there’s no guarantee the good times will continue rolling for Apple. Beijing is increasingly tightening the screws on foreign technology companies, having introduced strict laws aimed at policing the Internet and digital hardware.

The environment will get even tougher, Apple says, if the FBI prevails in seeking a so-called backdoor to Farook’s phone. That could set a precedent for China’s authoritarian leaders to demand the same in a country where Apple has never publicly defied orders.

“What’s driving this is Apple’s desire to persuade the global market, and particularly the China market, that the FBI can’t just stroll in and ask for data,” said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “I can’t imagine the Chinese would tolerate end-to-end encryption or a refusal to cooperate with their police, particularly in a terrorism case.” source