Contact Journal - Update places from Photos I took with my device

[martinspringer]

Contact Journal - Update places from Photos I took with my device

Recently I received a low exposure warning for a date that was 12 days ago. I am frequently taking photos on my iPhone. From the photos I took on that day I was able to reconstruct where that exposure could have happened.

Wouldn't it be nice if my Contact Journal contained all the places/ times where I took photos? My Contact Journal is quite empty, probably because it's too cumbersome to update it by hand. But I frequently take photos.

Problem and motivation

The Feature would improve my Contact Journal. Other users (e.g. the people I remember to have met when I took a photo) could be warned in case of exposure. Photos provide me with a context - they help me to remember events in the past.

Time and place is stored in EXIF data and can be viewed in the respective photo apps. It should be possible to extract these metadata on the device and use them for the described purpose.

Is this something you're interested in working on

I can't code, but I could work on a concept for that use case.

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Internal Tracking ID: EXPOSUREAPP-11429

[dsarkar]

Hi @martinspringer

Thanks for the suggestion. However, your suggestion is problematic in terms of privacy and data protection. The warning itself should be sufficient: Recommended action is to self-quarantine and get testet. In case of a high risk encounter the test is free.

There are very hard restrictions what a tracing app using the Google/Apple ENF are allowed to do. Tracing apps using the Google/Apple ENF cannot access by definition other personal data from the phone, or other apps, e.g. the contacts, calendar, GPS position, and I would assume neither photos.

Best wishes, DS

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Corona-Warn-App Open Source Team

[Ein-Tim]

@dsarkar

Actually, CWA already accesses photos, so that it can scan QR codes from pictures. However, I could very well imagine that an update with this feature would be blocked by Apple/Google.

[dsarkar]

@Ein-Tim CC @martinspringer Right, for one specific purpose of importing QR codes. We can discuss this proposal here first, we will of course create an internal ticket, however, I agree with you that with the current information available, this feature most probably will not pass the audits of Google and Apple.

[martinspringer]

@dsarkar, @Ein-Tim Thanks for your interesting thoughts. I was not aware of the hard restrictions what a tracing app can do, and being a supporter of privacy/ DPPO myself I am highly interested that my private and confidential information stays in a safe environment. However, from the perspective of a user one could question what is the difference between

1. scanning a QR code from a picture > keeping a record of my location in a personal CWA database and
2. taking a photo of a location > extracting the location info from the photo > keeping a record of my location in a personal CWA database.

Assuming that the location info is extracted with my consent (i.e. only from the pictures I took with my device) I wouldn't see a big difference.

[larswmh]

Thanks for your feature request @martinspringer. We have created an internal ticket for it and will raise this topic internally.
Internal Tracking ID: EXPOSUREAPP-11429

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Corona-Warn-App Open Source Team