From the beginning of this week it is possible to download on your smartphone Immuni, the awaited application to simplify contact tracking and receive alerts in case you have come into contact with people who have tested positive for coronavirus, and potentially contagious. The app is available for both iPhone and Android phones, has received many appreciations for the attention dedicated to privacy and for the ease of use, but has raised some doubts about its usefulness weeks after the major emergency phase and some criticism for the accumulated delays, although it is one of the first applications of its kind to be widespread in Europe.
Bending Spoons and coronavirus
The story of Immuni is closely linked to that of Bending Spoons, the company that made it free of charge on behalf of the government. The company is based in Milan and in its seven years of existence it has grown from its four founders to have over 150 employees, with a turnover that in the last year was almost 91 million euros (58.4 million euros in 2018).
Although it is located in the Corso Como area, famous above all for its bars and aperitifs, the building that houses Bending Spoons recalls the workplaces of Silicon Valley, with large open spaces, leisure areas and a room with fake grass and hammocks for relaxation. Employees have flexible hours, access keys to offices to go to work when they prefer and a bar to stop by for a drink at the end of the day. Successful applications have sprung from their computers, such as Live Quiz, which have made the company one of the leading iPhone app makers in the world, with over ten million active users across the US and Europe.
Each year, employees choose and vote on the destination of a donation that Bending Spoons will then make at its own expense for a good cause. When it was decided earlier this year, the choice fell on the Italian Civil Protection, which had started the first activities to keep the coronavirus epidemic under control. After a vote, with almost unanimous results, in early March Bending Spoons had therefore chosen to donate one million euros to the Civil Protection.
As some sources close to the company explained to the Post, in the days following the donation an internal discussion was born on the possibility of exploiting the IT skills and knowledge of Bending Spoons to do something even more concrete, in the context of creating tools to try to stem the epidemic, or at least manage it better. More or less in the same days, the executives of the Santagostino Medical Center (CMS), which offers healthcare services in Lombardy and Bologna at affordable prices and a very digital-oriented approach to patient management (reservations, payments , online assistance and medical records).
Things to know about coronavirus The Coronavirus Post newsletter updates you on the latest news: it's free and arrives every Thursday at 6pm. To receive it, write your email address here and press the button below. Having read the information, I agree to send the Newsletter Through mutual knowledge, Bending Spoons and CMS began to collaborate in mid-March for the creation of a platform (very different from the current Immuni) that could have been used to geographically track the spread of the infection, also thanks to user reports via an application. . A first prototype of the platform was presented to the Minister of Innovation, Paola Pisano, who showed her appreciation for the initiative, but without the assumption of any commitment by the government, at that stage already engaged on several fronts to manage the health emergency that was in progress.
Quick call
On 23 March, a few days after their meeting, Pisano announced the launch of a “fast call” for the selection of an application to track contacts and another app to simplify the management of your health data. The platform that Bending Spoons had shown to the minister did not include contact tracing (CT), but the company felt that reviewing their plans could be a good opportunity to respond to the need to do something concrete and based on their knowledge.
Bending Spoons adhered to the call for contact tracing, while the Santagostino Medical Center to that for the management of health data. In the following weeks, the collaboration between the two companies would therefore decrease, having set different objectives (although initially considered compatible to create a more complex app, but perhaps too ambitious given the circumstances and times).
The call aroused considerable interest from newspapers: the idea of an app for tracing contacts seemed promising, also on the basis of similar experiences conducted in other countries such as South Korea, but at the same time raised many doubts on the subject. the protection of personal data. The South Korean systems had in fact led to some problems, starting with the possibility of reconstructing the movements of individuals using the data collected by the system to report contacts with potentially contagious people. Also for this reason, the notice asked that sufficient guarantees be offered from the point of view of the protection of personal data.
Selection
Having obtained the candidacies, Pisano had set up a “task force” of 74 experts, divided into different groups, who had been entrusted with the task of evaluating the proposals and to provide indications for the choice of the application to be developed. The decision to set up such numerous working groups raised some doubts about the timing of the initiative: on the one hand some experts and candidates were pressing for a quick decision, on the other hand the government wanted to proceed with great caution, showing at the same time that it did not have still very clear ideas on where the initiative would have landed.
The request for acceleration took place in mid-April, when the extraordinary commissioner for the health emergency, Domenico Arcuri, announced that he had chosen Immuni, the completely free proposal of Bending Spoons, to proceed with the creation of an app. The choice was based on the assessments of the technicians and experts of the task force working groups and, in communicating it, Arcuri was very optimistic, saying that by the end of April Immuni would be ready. The commissioner, like other members of the government, had previously made other announcements about the possibility of having the application quickly, indicating unrealistic tight deadlines. On the basis of those estimates, expectations were generated that were punctually unfulfilled in the facts, which announcement after announcement would have helped to make the app's arrival perceive as perpetually delayed.
Apple and Google
We were moving in uncharted and uncertain territories. Initially, Bending Spoons had proposed to use a centralized and standard-based system – recently set up by a European consortium – which should have provided sufficient guarantees for user privacy. A few days after the start of the collaboration, however, it became clear that the proposed system was not sufficiently secure and the first defections were registered. Then something happened up to that moment unthinkable.
On April 10, Apple and Google, traditionally rivals in the smartphone industry with their respective iPhones and Android devices, announced a completely new collaboration to simplify the development of contact tracking applications. They said they were working to modify the most recent versions of their operating systems, in order to offer a decentralized solution in which the most important and sensitive data always and only remain in the memory of individual smartphones, without being shared online with the risk of running out. in the wrong hands.
The collaboration between Apple and Google made it possible to develop applications for contact tracing much more effective, overcoming some obstacles that had emerged in the first apps tested in other countries. In particular, the proposed system made it possible for apps to function as Immune even when the phone has an idle screen, or other applications are being used. Not a small thing, considering that the first apps for contact tracking, such as the one initially used in Singapore, could only work if you did not lock your iPhone screen, with all the inconveniences of the case, not to mention the major battery consumption.
Rethinking Immuni
After the announcement of Apple and Google it became evident that the Bending Spoons solution had to be rethought, moving to a decentralized system. This change involved the launch of a confrontation between the company and the government, which did not show to have foreclosures, but which asked for time to carry out further technical investigations and on the effects for the protection of privacy. In early May, reservations were lifted, and Bending Spoons began work on the new version, waiting for Apple and Google to release a stable, working version of their systems.
Meanwhile, the investigations on privacy continued and in particular on the data center that would be used by the platform. Sources close to Bending Spoons confirmed to the Post that initially the choice fell on Google Cloud Platform, one of the largest services for remote data management, but the government did not really like the idea of collecting data (although completely anonymous and encrypted) on a system over which it could not have exercised direct control, and in any case managed by a company outside the European Union.
A new internal confrontation led to the choice of the two public companies Sogei and PagoPa for the management of the platform, in order to maintain the control of the data within the State as much as possible. Sogei (General Information Technology Society) is controlled by the Ministry of Economy and deals with the development of information systems for the public administration, such as for example the one for the so-called “730 pre-compiled”. For Immuni, he assumed responsibility for the management of the IT infrastructure on which anonymous data on positive coronavirus cases pass. Sogei's involvement required some more technical time, but according to many observers it contributed to making the system more secure, avoiding the presence of third parties in data management.
Delays?
Weeks of work, comparisons and evaluations by experts and the Privacy Guarantor this week resulted in the release of the first version of Immuni, which it can be downloaded for free via the App Store (iPhone) and the Google Play Store (Android). Several project participants admitted that the development of the application could have proceeded faster, but that there would have been a risk of having an app with technical problems or less reliable from a personal data protection point of view.
Timing was also affected by circumstances beyond the control of Bending Spoons or the government. For example, it was necessary to wait around May 20 for Apple and Google to publish updates to their respective iOS and Android, with changes to make contact tracing apps based on the standard chosen by the two companies usable. It wouldn't have been possible to spread Immuni before – it just wouldn't have worked. Let's see why.
How Immuni works
Immuni is based on a version of Bluetooth (BLE) wireless data transmission technology, similar to the one that allows a couple of wireless headphones to connect to your smartphone and that Apple and Google have unlocked in their operating systems, making it accessible even for a different and unimaginable purpose before the pandemic such as contact tracking.
After downloading and running it, Immuni doesn't require many interactions, other than allowing it to use Bluetooth. Every day, the application generates an alphanumeric key (letters and numbers) on the basis of which it produces an identification code (ID), which it is then emitted from the smartphone via Bluetooth for about 15 minutes. When the ID expires, Immuni generates a new one, always linked to the same key known only to the application. In this way it becomes practically impossible for an attacker to trace an ID to a specific smartphone.
Smartphones that have Immuni and that come into contact with each other (for example because their owners stop on the same park bench or queue in the same supermarket) exchange IDs and record the information exclusively in their memory, without sending the given to no one else. With a good degree of approximation, the app also calculates the minimum distance reached with other smartphones and the time spent in their presence: two important information to estimate whether the approach to a person who later proved to be positive was sufficient to risk of being infected. Immuni never records its geographical position, nor does it share it with others: it is based exclusively on the proximity between smartphones.
Paolo and Francesca
Understanding how Immuni works requires some mental gymnastics, let's try an example. Paolo sits on a bench in the park where Francesca is sitting, whom he doesn't know: he is listening to some music, she is reading a book. After about twenty minutes, Francesca closes the book, gets up and takes a walk home. The next day she begins to feel unwell, she has some fever lines and difficulty breathing, her doctor prescribes a swab test to check for the presence of the coronavirus. Francesca carries out the test, passes a day and is contacted by a health worker who warns her that she has tested positive and that she will have to remain in isolation at home, taking care to report to the doctor any worsening of symptoms.
The operator then proposes to Francesca, who had already installed Immuni, to use it to report her case, so that people crossed over in the previous days and with the app on their smartphones can be warned. Francesca agrees, the operator asks her to read her a code that generates the application (in the “Loading data” section), to provide the province in which she lives and indicatively the day she started having symptoms.
This information is sent by the operator to the data center, after which Francesca has about two minutes to press the “Verify” button on her Immuni, so that the app can confirm the correspondence with the code entered by the operator and can start the transfer of the keys it had generated in the previous days (those used to produce the IDs every 15 minutes). No personal data or data attributable to Francesca is transmitted and uploaded.
While Francesca is at home in bed with a fever, Paolo is out for a walk, unaware of everything. Like every day, her Immuni app connects to the data center and asks for the list of keys loaded by the apps from people who tested positive in the last few days, like Francesca. Once the list of keys has been downloaded, Immuni checks for any compatibility with the IDs it had received from the smartphones of the people with whom Paolo had come into contact. He finds a match with a key (Francesca's) and then activates a notification that Paolo sees on his phone screen: Immuni tells him that he has come into contact with someone who then tested positive and could be contagious. Paolo will never know that Francesca was the contagious person, what matters is something else: that he knows that he has been exposed, that he applies a few more precautions and that he consult a doctor.
Warranties and testing
Fortunately, explaining how Immuni works is much more complicated than using the application. Understanding the basic mechanisms can however be useful to get an idea of the complexity of the system, why it took a long time to be developed and the guarantees in terms of privacy it offers, as recognized by analysts and IT experts. For further protection at the critical point of the system, the one that provides for the transmission of data from the data center to individual smartphones, systems have also been developed to produce false disturbing communications, so that data cannot be easily intercepted while it is being transmitted. However, the information is anonymous and fragmented into thousands of IDs, so it would be very difficult to trace specific people.
Even if Immuni can already be downloaded by everyone, it will be necessary to wait for the outcome of a first trial in Liguria, Marche, Abruzzo and Puglia decided to verify the functionality of the app and correct any malfunctions. The test phase will start on June 8 and should last a few days, before extending the app's functions to the rest of Italy. The partial start could cause some misunderstanding among those who download Immuni in regions other than the four indicated for experimentation, obtaining an app that appears to be working even if not yet fully operational.
The choice of this start-up phase has led to some criticism, directed above all towards the communication choices of the government considered very deficient. The various stages of development of Immuni could be communicated in a more transparent and informative way by the institutions, which in any case must be recognized for having made public and accessible the codes, resources and documents necessary to make Immuni work. The government asked Bending Spoons not to communicate, deeming it more useful to send information only from the institutions, but it then failed to give timely and clear updates on the progress of the work, helping to create expectations for completion times that were technically unrealistic.
Will it work?
Immune, like similar applications that are emerging in other countries, is in a sense an unprecedented novelty in the landscape of apps and services through smartphone: it is therefore difficult to predict how much it could prove useful to counter the spread of the coronavirus epidemic in our country. Where similar solutions have been used, such as in South Korea, it has not yet been possible to determine whether or not they have had a positive impact and to what extent. Contact tracing is performed primarily through the work of employees, who are responsible for reconstructing the chains of infections by verifying whether the exposed persons have been infected. Applications can facilitate some steps of this process, also increasing the sense of responsibility between individuals.
Whether Immuni is successful will also depend on how many people decide to use the application. In a few days it was downloaded by over a million people, while others who wanted to install it could not. In fact, Immuni can only work if installed on iPhones with the latest version of iOS (13.5) and on Android smartphones from the Marshmallow version (6) onwards. This makes Immuni potentially usable on 10,400 different models of Android-compatible smartphones, but increases the risk of the app failing to work on some models.
These days, for example, problems have emerged with Huawei and Honor devices, which employ a modified version of Android that prevents apps from continuing to run for a long time when they are in the background. The block depends on Huawei and cannot be circumvented by Bending Spoons, but contacts have still been initiated with the Chinese company to try to improve the situation. Apple is considering whether to extend the functionality to iOS 12, in order to offer greater compatibility even on older iPhones (iOS 13 in Italy is still installed on about 70 percent of Apple mobile devices).
These limitations could affect the amount of smartphones on which Immuni will be active in the first few weeks of its publication. While it was still under development, rather pessimistic forecasts were circulating, which supported the need to have Immuni installed on at least 60 percent of smartphones in Italy to get some results. The estimate was based on a very different situation from the current one with a population still completely susceptible to the coronavirus, a very high number of new positives every day and a lockdown phase just starting. Thanks to the restrictions imposed for almost two months and physical distancing, the situation has now improved, and it is estimated that Immuni could prove useful even if active on a lower percentage of smartphones.
However, it is true that the more smartphones have Immuni active, the more likely it will be to have some positive effect, although it is still difficult to predict a few days after the application arrives. For this reason, the government and those who created it trust that it will be discharged as much as possible: it does not mean that it helps to save thousands of lives, but if it contributed even just to save one, it would still be worth it.
