And I see the users in the UK trial are complaining about the battery drain, as predicted by just about everybody outside NHSX.
Next step for the UK: a humiliating climb down smothered in a pack of lies designed to make it look as though this was the plan all along.
“Our original system was designed to provide a test baseline for the eventual rollout of our app using the Apple/Google API. We are pleased to report that the real system, which we always planned to release, is working exactly as we intended.”
The elephant in the room is that Apple’s new API will only work on devices running the very latest version of iOS (and the same for Android). This kind of app requires mass adoption so Apple and Google new API is next to useless.
NHSX were right to explore alternatives.
The UK/NHS app runs on iPhones back to about iPhone 5s and needs at least iOS 9. Pretty good, I thought. It does not need the (soon to be released) Apple/Google framework which is how come it has already been deployed in a test area of the UK.
If Apple so wants, otherwise the app is banned from the app store and does not work anymore.
Why would Apple ban the app? It's not a competition, we're all on the same side here.
As mentioned in the article, only 14 days worth of anonymized data is on the phone and only sent if the user opts in. I would have no problem that they include location, it can't be traced to you anyway and it could be useful for mapping hot spots so that they could apply more security measures, and yes, which could include a bit more surveillance. This is a nasty contagious pathogen the likes that have never been seen.
When your set of anonymized tokens are all tagged with location data, how hard do you think it is to figure out who is who when that location data is going to swiftly identify where you lay your head down at night (unless you are a vagabond calling a new town “home” day after day)
But the information isn't tagged with location data (neither Apple/Google nor UK NHS). They're both about who you were near, not where that happened.
Please don't invent conspiracies when these people are trying to save lives.
What a bunch of bunk. There's only two ways out of this disaster - (1) a vaccine or (2) an app exactly like this on at least 60% of phones and testing available to anyone that wants it 24/7 with results in an hour - so any positives can isolate immediately. This article is garbage. The reporters should be GD ashamed of themselves for pushing a false narrative against the public health.
What a bunch of bunk. There's only two ways out of this disaster - (1) a vaccine or (2) an app exactly like this on at least 60% of phones and testing available to anyone that wants it 24/7 with results in an hour - so any positives can isolate immediately. This article is garbage. The reporters should be GD ashamed of themselves for pushing a false narrative against the public health.
Yes, that's true.
We have thousands of Typhoid Mary's wondering our streets when all it takes is one to trigger off a second wave.
What people forget (or probably never understood) is that stay-at-home was only meant to slow down the infection rate enough to keep it from overwhelming the healthcare system. It was never meant nor possible for it to eliminate the virus. Even China and South Korea who both managed it very well, began to have a second wave (mostly from importing new Typhoid Mary's from other countries). Fortunately, they had the resources in place to smother it a second time.
But Americans -- even the sane ones -- are eager to escape stay-at-home orders -- even though the U.S. never geared up to institute effective testing & tracing programs. They are rightly saying: "we can't sit here in our houses forever". Unfortunately, the alternative is either: effective testing and tracing or another 80K dead Americans. Hopefully we have a responsible president by the time the third wave rolls around. This one says he doesn't care how many die.
Why are companies pretending that they don't know about us? I mean, Google, Facebook, Twitter, are selling our information to advertisers but they don't know where we've been?
Taiwan and South Korea are doing contact tracing by subpoena cellphone companies, using smartphone's unique IMEI numbers and got a list of GPS location and timestamps. Why aren't we doing this in the US? For anyone who don't corporate, they'd threaten to publish the names and so far everyone seemed to corporate.
[...] I would vastly prefer an API with privacy protection as a core focus to the Microsoft venture that Connecticut announced they will be using.
The “ContaCT” system developed by Microsoft for Connecticut has nothing to do with the Apple/Google API and the European apps under discussion here.
Connecticut’s health department software was out of date and unable to efficiently handle some aspects of the state’s pandemic response. So they hired Microsoft to fix the problems. One aspect of that is ContaCT, which is simply an interface that people who have tested positive can use to provide information for the state’s contact tracers to work with. It doesn’t do any contact tracing itself. It’s basically just a form.
No way I am going to use any covid app. I don’t trust any of the parties involved.
Then why bother being plugged in? You lose your privacy the moment you connect to the internet. Someone is always watching what you’re doing and selling the information to someone else. Operating systems, ad trackers, internet service providers, cell carriers, even certain VPN providers track what you do. You’re not “safe” anywhere so you might as well unplug and go live with the Amish.
So, you don’t even try to make it harder to get your information?!
The sheer amount of "mis-knowledge" about Apple as a company is astounding! Apple has helped designed this to put the USER first and foremost, not health agencies! Maybe the privacy constraints will make this tech useless for health agencies, but if it works correctly for users, then mission accomplished!
I applaud Apple and Google for teaming up on a singular (global) solution! Working together is what beats pandemics!
No way I am going to use any covid app. I don’t trust any of the parties involved.
Then why bother being plugged in? You lose your privacy the moment you connect to the internet. Someone is always watching what you’re doing and selling the information to someone else. Operating systems, ad trackers, internet service providers, cell carriers, even certain VPN providers track what you do. You’re not “safe” anywhere so you might as well unplug and go live with the Amish.
So, you don’t even try to make it harder to get your information?!
Not only do a number of private companies already have your information but the Patriot Act insures the government has it as well.
So, why are all the FakePatriots on the right suddenly all in a dither over privacy? Could it be that their leader failed to ramp up testing -- which is a prerequisite for tracing -- and an effective tracing strategy would again highlight his failures?
No way I am going to use any covid app. I don’t trust any of the parties involved.
Yeah. Let people vote. I am sure that many people will install gov made apps not based on Apple/Google API. And keep you feature phones in your drawers for some time in case someone would push tracking by law
jony0 said: ...Finally, this is 2020 not 1918, we should be doing much much better with all the advances in medicine and worldwide communication resources. This thing is just crazy.
We should be, but I think what that should be is considerably different than how we've approached this.
svanstrom said: Your trust in advances of medicine is cute, but there's been no magic development where we use some sort of nanotechnology to smartly attack anything in the body. This type of work is still hard work doing "basic" things like analysing about a gazillion ways that proteins behave in certain circumstances etc. It is work far from randomly putting stuff in beakers and getting surprised if it goes boom, but it's still combinatorial work that one way or another (actual physical tests, math, computer models, etc) requires the hours to be put in to find a solution.
We also know quite a bit more about how to make our bodies better and more resistant to this kind of thing, but most of that gets largely ignored. While I'm quite grateful for 'advanced medicine' when something goes really wrong, it is kind of 'dark ages' anymore in light of the bigger picture. (Using scare-quotes, because the dark ages being dark is kind of a historical myth.)
GeorgeBMac said: What people forget (or probably never understood) is that stay-at-home was only meant to slow down the infection rate enough to keep it from overwhelming the healthcare system. It was never meant nor possible for it to eliminate the virus.
Yeah, that's what I thought too, but now we've moved the goal post.
GeorgeBMac said: But Americans -- even the sane ones -- are eager to escape stay-at-home orders -- even though the U.S. never geared up to institute effective testing & tracing programs. They are rightly saying: "we can't sit here in our houses forever". Unfortunately, the alternative is either: effective testing and tracing or another 80K dead Americans. Hopefully we have a responsible president by the time the third wave rolls around. This one says he doesn't care how many die.
Or, it acts like past Covid outbreaks and burns out? Or, we come up with a good treatment? (BTW, we aren't near 80K dead Americans, as there has been a lot of mis-reporting, and shouldn't have to worry about another 80K until Fall).
svanstrom said: Your trust in advances of medicine is cute, but there's been no magic development where we use some sort of nanotechnology to smartly attack anything in the body. This type of work is still hard work doing "basic" things like analysing about a gazillion ways that proteins behave in certain circumstances etc. It is work far from randomly putting stuff in beakers and getting surprised if it goes boom, but it's still combinatorial work that one way or another (actual physical tests, math, computer models, etc) requires the hours to be put in to find a solution.
Comments
But the information isn't tagged with location data (neither Apple/Google nor UK NHS). They're both about who you were near, not where that happened.
Please don't invent conspiracies when these people are trying to save lives.
Apple, Google Start to Win Over Europe to Their Virus-Tracking Technology
Paywall.
Just came out today. Perhaps Appleinsider can do a summary for other readers who don’t subscribe.
Taiwan and South Korea are doing contact tracing by subpoena cellphone companies, using smartphone's unique IMEI numbers and got a list of GPS location and timestamps. Why aren't we doing this in the US? For anyone who don't corporate, they'd threaten to publish the names and so far everyone seemed to corporate.
Connecticut’s health department software was out of date and unable to efficiently handle some aspects of the state’s pandemic response. So they hired Microsoft to fix the problems. One aspect of that is ContaCT, which is simply an interface that people who have tested positive can use to provide information for the state’s contact tracers to work with. It doesn’t do any contact tracing itself. It’s basically just a form.
... or another 80,000+ lives? What is your price?
The sheer amount of "mis-knowledge" about Apple as a company is astounding! Apple has helped designed this to put the USER first and foremost, not health agencies! Maybe the privacy constraints will make this tech useless for health agencies, but if it works correctly for users, then mission accomplished!
I applaud Apple and Google for teaming up on a singular (global) solution! Working together is what beats pandemics!
That's a statement. Now back it up. Why don't you trust [Apple] with your privacy?
That's ideology not reality -- unless they elect someone like Trump who says it doesn't matter how many more die. But that's him -- not government.
Yeah. Let people vote. I am sure that many people will install gov made apps not based on Apple/Google API. And keep you feature phones in your drawers for some time in case someone would push tracking by law
Not entirely true. We've got stuff like the Folding@home project has pulled off, with 2.3 ExaFLOPs of computing power ( https://twitter.com/studio_both/status/1261634133408784385 )
We also know quite a bit more about how to make our bodies better and more resistant to this kind of thing, but most of that gets largely ignored. While I'm quite grateful for 'advanced medicine' when something goes really wrong, it is kind of 'dark ages' anymore in light of the bigger picture. (Using scare-quotes, because the dark ages being dark is kind of a historical myth.)
Or, it acts like past Covid outbreaks and burns out? Or, we come up with a good treatment? (BTW, we aren't near 80K dead Americans, as there has been a lot of mis-reporting, and shouldn't have to worry about another 80K until Fall).
If you want to keep up to date on a more realistic picture of what is going on:
https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic