Apple ResearchKit Ping!
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Posted on 03/09/2015 9:24:11 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
Announced by Apple executive Jeff Williams at Monday's "Spring Forward" presentation, the new ResearchKit tools will pull data from applications and HealthKit. Users can opt in and share the data with researchers if they choose, and Apple will never have access to the data.
ResearchKit will be open source and available to the public next month. Starting immediately, five applications built with ResearchKit by Apple and its partners will be available on the App Store.
Apple has worked with medical researchers and facilities around the world to create ResearchKit.
(Excerpt) Read more at appleinsider.com ...
Because it has such a public service orientation, it only makes sense that Apple would be making ResearchKit open source.
To Obama, Warren, and Katleen Sebelius I say, “You didn’t build that.” It is a major corporation, acting in a leadership role in society, seeing an opportunity to help the public - and doing it. On its own initiative.
Ping.
>>ResearchKit is effectively a tool for recruiting subjects for medical research, and collecting data from volunteers. According to Tim Cook, this addresses serious difficulty researchers have getting enough volunteers.<<
“Volunteers” - for now.
Remember apple is one of the most liberal companies on the planet. How long until it works with the Big Government it loves so much (which has placed it in a competitive position since its products are more expensive than good) to just start pulling data?
Not very — in fact they have 2 long years to exactly that.
Only a fool would wear an apple wrist monitor ever — but that never stopped an apple fanboy before.
They are getting ready for a major new use for smart phones to deliver health care.
The “tricorder” X-Prize competition has been going on to build as much health care value as possible into an inexpensive handheld device (http://tricorder.xprize.org/?gclid=CNi54vf6nMQCFQeGaQoduDYARg )
The winner will be announced in January, but Apple (and others) have been working in parallel, as they see this field developing.
“Users can opt in and share the data with researchers if they choose, and Apple will never have access to the data”
Uh huh. Like everything out there isn’t subject to confiscation, hacking and mis-use 24/7. Funny ha.
ResearchKit must naturally include a set of functions for hoovering up data, which could then be activated by software to report to the Mothership - just like other programs to exploit smartphones which Snowden exposed.
They will assure folks that it is for a good cause - refining Apple products and profits, along the way. They probably want to automatically gobble up all the personal data that they can - like they were Google or something.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
More of your mis-information. You don't use Apple products so you don't know whether they are good or bad. you just lie. You know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Nothing at all.
What you also apparently don't know, is that Apple has put ResearchKit in Open Source.
I won't go into your idiocy. . . it's self apparent from all of your previous posts on Apple threads.
You know "naturally" nothing of the kind. Apple is not in the business of collecting or selling user's data. They are not interested in user's data. They have explicitly stated that as a fact. They will not get any of it.
Snowden't paper he released was about a "Close exploit", which meant the government agents had to have had physical custody of the targeted iPhone to install their software/hardware. It was dated October 2007, just after the release of the original iPhone.
There are no backdoors on the iPhones and the data is encrypted to 256 bit AES standard using the owners passcode entangled with the device's 256 character UUID. Even if the data were uploaded to Apple, and some is on the iCloud, even Apple cannot decipher it without the owners passcode. Apple then anonymizes the data, spits it into four chunks, mixes it with other users, and then additionally encrypts it with their own 256 bit AES encryption. If the government demands Apple hand over what it has, all they get is gobble-de-gook. If they take your iPhone, it would take them 10207 YEARS to try all possible keys to decipher your data. By then, I think it might be moot. . . since the Universe would have died a heat death around 10187 years along the way.
Apple has stated their customers' privacy is paramount to them. They are refusing to cooperate with the government.
“Apple has stated their customers’ privacy is paramount to them.”
And Google supposedly lives by the motto “Don’t be evil” while collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party, collecting more data on individuals than any group ever in history, and pillaging intellectual property wholesale. They do this for their profit and competitive advantage, among whatever other motivations they may have.
Snowden revealed more than just “close exploits” which require physical custody of a smartphone. He revealed that many popular apps, such as Angry Birds, Google Maps and Facebook; provided remote software access to information on that phone (unrelated to the app). Oh, and this happens on Apple phones too... all day, every day.
“Naturally” if a tool kit is going to support research, it must collect and report data. So naturally, such functions, such mechanisms, MUST be included. These procedures can then be called by software as needed. So there is a potential vulnerability for other data, but my point was intended for the health care/medical/biometric data itself, for which it is promoted. An app can simply store an unencrypted copy or transmit data before it is encrypted - the essential advantage of having this “feature” installed on the device itself. Such functions could be included in a tool kit for use as needed in the future - basic operations to store and transmit.
All of Silicon Valley wants personal data - it is coin of the realm in IT. It will support medical research and discovery, but it also provides a competitive advantage to the company that has the most and the best. There is a race on in this sector to collect health/medical/genetic information on the population, and Apple is gearing up to be a player, with their ResearchKit.
>>I won’t go into your idiocy. . . it’s self apparent from all of your previous posts on Apple threads.<<
As is your fanboy idiocy on those same threads.
Always nice to be a follower of trailing technology, eh fanboy? Your liberal masters are now where others were 3 years ago.
It’s Open Source, so you can examine it for yourself and if there is something malicious in it, you can publish your results to the world ... :-) ...
Oh boy ... another one of those APPLE-HATER TROLLS on Free Republic! Those members of the APPLE-HATER CULT really need to get psychiatric help for their obsessive/compulsive disorder ... they don’t appear to be in control of themselves ... LOL ...
Take a look at the Apple Event yesterday on it. They have a video of it. Apple made it clear that none of the data went to Apple. The data goes to the medical research facility. This information that goes to the medical research facility is the same information that goes to the facility, if you were actually “there” in their facility and the same test were done on site. If you have a question as to HOW a particular medical research facility is handling your medical data, then you’ll need to go over that specifically with them.
Of course, if you don’t think the medical research facility should have any medical information from you, then you can simply NOT participate in the study ... :-) ...
BUT ... on another issue ... since the data going to a medical research facility seems to be a problem for you, I’m wondering how Mapuche of a problem it is for you when you go to a doctor’s office and they collect medical information on you? ... LOL ...
I guess if you have a religious trust in the purity of Apple Corp, it might be reasonable to assume that they are immune from the human self interest and occasional bad apples (pun intended) that the rest of humanity suffers from. If only such angels could run our Government...
It is not some paranoid individual fetish for my personal privacy (which you impute on me personally), but rather my recognition of the widespread practice of gathering personal data on wide swaths of society through new technologies by silicon valley firms and the Government, and the potential risks this presents to the innocent which underlie my comments.
The money is huge - billionaires are being made. Many in the public and in the industry are aware of the history of repeated privacy violations that have covertly been committed within popular IT products, so the Valley has become more sophisticated in assuaging such concerns with their products.
Much ado can be given to safeguards like encryption strength, or not holding the data themselves - while the apps handle the data unencrypted and can do whatever they are programmed to do with it (bypassing the encryption functions), while spinoffs and agreement contracts (and even software back doors!) can give the company (and others!) access to the data when they want it... all for purely charitable purposes they will assure us, while driving their maseratis and buying their private islands and mega-yachts.
So there is great potential for medical advances, for profits, and for abuse of individuals’ privacy. If the toolkit includes a toggle function for “opt in” or “opt out”, then that function can be toggled. They may also have unadvertised troubleshooting and maintenance functions that can be called to toggle “test” such functions - perhaps not released with the general functions provided for open source review. Indeed, it is most likely, if they intend to provide support for the product. The devil is in the details.
It is possible to write code with very secure protections for privacy, but there is less profit in that, and it tends to tradeoff some ease of use.
I find mocking denial of the risk of abuse, upon first hearing, to be pitifully gullible and naive - especially in light of what has already occurred.
On another issue, I just don’t understand your question, as to how Mapuche of a problem it is? What does Mapuche mean as an adjective? An ethnic or racial stereotype?
If Apple was making money from the customers’ information (if “that” was where all the huge profits were coming from) ... then there would be some concern on my part.
But since Apple is making huge profits from the hardware they make (and accompanying services to support the hardware), and have made it a “selling point” of such hardware that they protect the privacy of their users, then I have much less to be concerned about than those who make their money primarily from software and they don’t have huge profits from hardware they make.
Apple has every reason in the world to PROTECT their hardware profits and not endanger the public’s trust of Apple protecting their privacy with all due diligence!
There are a WHOLE LOT OF OTHER COMPANIES I would be pointing to first, before I EVER got to Apple, at the very bottom of that list ... LOL ...
“Mapuche” is my spelling checker taking over ... LOL ...
It’s actually ... “much” ...
I didn’t even know that was a word ... :-) ...
I concur with you that Apple is relatively low (very low actually) on the list of past privacy abusers (past performance is no guarantee of future results though). I would say that Google is the Worldbeater in that category. Apple’s use of open source is one of the best assurances - but still far from certain protection.
Apple is always shopping for new functionality to buy or copy, like everyone else in the industry - you need to catch a new wave before your current ride runs out. Apple (probably due to its very popularity) has been subject to many privacy hacks, so risk of compromise is significant, even despite the best intentions. Vulnerabilities are often found the hard way.
For full disclosure, I love Apple products. And I am excited about the improvement in health care delivery that is coming on apps and small/cheap devices like smartphones, or just the Internet (see my post above on the tricorder X-Prize)... disruptive technology that will lower costs and rapidly penetrate the third world, saving and improving countless lives.
But I know that a small group of people, even an individual out of 10,000, can plan in an exploit for their profit, or even for their political/ideological exploitation. I believe that those sworn to secrecy by the Government, and thereby subject to prosecution, will often aid or abet Government exploitation, often with the best of motivations.
In the longer run (which is still not very long), I believe that technology is going to eliminate most or all of the privacy that humans have historically enjoyed. As these technologies pour out rapidly, we need to buck hard for safeguards, or we risk overwhelmingly intrusive monitoring, being abused for oppressive control or fraudulent manipulation.
For every new function or feature, ask how it can be abused, as well as how it can be used.
You have no idea how much you guys amuse me.
The only funnier thing would to see you in line to buy your “obsolete before it even is released” $400-$17,000 Apple Watch.
Hey can you take a selfie when you do and post it? I am sure Apple makes a $200 selfie-stick.
That would really make my day!
Okay ... so you’re telling us that you also have the motive of “amusement” for being in the APPLE-HATER TROLL group ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.