With the current state of things in the US there have been several recommendations for users of apps like period trackers to remove them from their devices. The recommendation is so that the data cannot be requested from the devs to prosecute women based on the contents thereof.
I feel that a POD would be an excellent place to store the actual data that is used by an application such as those for their use, but they don’t necessarily need to keep track of. Retrieve the data, make a calculation, store the result in the POD and display in the UI. Never keep anything on a remote server.
I was just wanting to know if anyone was working on something like this?
Solid definitely has a role to play in this kind of private data. However, if a government can appropriate your devices and read any data on them, Solid will not be able to prevent that. That battle needs to be fought in the courts and the streets. One could keep data on a remote pod and not keep any links to the remote pod on local devices. That would make it more difficult though not impossible to find. There are a number of Solid healthcare applications in development and privacy concerns are central to them, however, AFAIK, none would be able to keep data private in the case of confiscation of the device.
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I agree with @jeffz that this (at least from my point of view) sounds more like a legal / society battle than about technical possibilities.
That said, I’m currently working on a uni group project, where we make something like Cryptpad on Solid. So the data is E2E encrypted and even if the Solid Pod would want to share the contents, it would not be able to read the content. However, (1) this makes interoperability harder which is a core part of Solid, and (2) you could still be legally required to give your password to law enforcement (idk if that’s the case). If you think these points are not a problem for you, I think that would be a possibility.
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Hi All, I recently had the same thought, @shawnstaggs
I’ve been thinking about this all week. And while I think that an encrypted app would be an even better solution, I think a Solid app would still be better than what is available now. In fact, I think it’s the perfect use case for Solid because one of Solid’s main advantages over the current state of things is that it gives users the only key to unlock their data–so, while police or a government could in theory (depending on the laws, jurisdiction, courts, etc.) confiscate a device and demand a password, the user still has the confidence of knowing: 1) where their data is, 2) who has access to it, and 3) whether it’s been exposed. None of those assurances exist currently.
I also agree that we all need to continue fighting these privacy battles in courts, by demonstrating, when we vote, etc., but I think that building the Solid ecosystem, and providing apps that show its usefulness, is just as critical a cause as these others. In fact, as it relates to period tracker apps, the very reason that women in the U.S. are currently looking for a better solution is because of losing ground in court decisions. This provides a powerful opportunity to demonstrate one of the fundamental strengths of Solid–it can upend traditional power structures from the bottom up.
Anyway, having said all of that, credit needs to go to @Timea for thinking of this before any of us; she started working on a period tracker app last year, and just posted the repo here: GitHub - timea-solid/SolidPeriodTracker
I’m going to focus my efforts on that, for now. Hopefully I’ll have a PR I can contribute in the next few days.
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