Contact Tracing Without Mass Surveillance (With 3Blue1Brown!)

This video actually came out 3 weeks ago, and I totally forgot to share it with you. For the five of you who know about me but not Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown), he makes friggin' amazing math videos, both detailed and accessible – showing the true elegant beauty of mathematics.

So I've no idea why he wanted to video-ify my non-math COVID-19 comics (made in collab with an epidemiologist & a privacy researcher), but I said yes!

🎬 Does contact tracing necessarily sacrifice privacy? 🎬 (7 min video)

I feel awkward about sharing this video now, coz it's been weeks & I'm pretty sure my audience is mostly a subset of Grant's. But, 3 reasons why I'm sharing this, in descending order of importance:

1) Now that there's USA-wide protests against a brutal abuse of power, it's important the people in power don't have increased mass surveillance to target journalists & peaceful activists. This isn't tinfoil hattery – the FBI's used its powers before to suppress Dr. King & the non-violent Civil Rights Movement.

(Also, I know he's increased mass surveillance, but I was moved by Obama's recent post – on how to take this justified anger, divert it from people burning their own marginalized communities, and transform that anger into specific, sustainable local action. There's also a collection of resources: Anguish & Action.)

2) The first decentralized, privacy-first COVID-19 contact tracing app is live! Went live last week, in Switzerland. Hopefully other national & international orgs follow suit. (Again: of course apps can't solve the pandemic alone, but neither does handwashing, so I've no idea why people keep bringing up "it can't solve COVID-19 alone" as a critique. Every bit to lower R < 1 counts.)

3) Grant just finished his Lockdown Math series, and it's really good! It's very different from his usual stuff, which is also really good. Seriously go check out his YouTube channel & Patreon.

Again, stay safe, y'all.

💖,
~ Nicky

P.S: Will be taking it slow & easy in June. As detailed in yesterday's post, I'm still feeling a bit burnt out from the month of continuous late-night crunch I did to get the COVID-19 explorable out in time. Of course, will keep you updated on what's next, and how it's coming along! Thanks for your patience and kind words~