The U.K. is an embarrassment so far in its response to Covid-19.
Add this to the list. Every decision whether it was access to tests/lockdown/borders/protective equipment etc ... too little and very late.
We needed that app weeks ago here in the U.K. in combination with a viable and frequent test service.
Our economy is ruined , & thousands of unnecessary deaths which could have been prevented. The general public here still can’t get access to tests unless carted off to hospital. It’s a disgrace.
There is a reason countries like New Zealand did so well.
All I can say is whilst the U.K. is terrible it looks like there are plenty of countries making equally bad decisions.
Thats not what the majority of the British public think with the British Government having record approval ratings on top if its huge election win in December. Its interesting that a Kings College, London and Ipsos Mori poll showed that that those attacking the governement and/or not oberserving social-distancing laws were either Labour Party supporters or Remoaners - which is applicable to you?
The UK is ahead of Belgium, Spain, Italy, and France in minimising the number of deaths per million population. This is despite the fact that the UK has the highest population density in Europe, which makes social-distancing more difficult and infection spread easier.
Whereas New Zeland has one of the lowest population densities on the planet...
The Scottish public think otherwise...and the date backs up the fact that the UK has one of the highest death rates as is and has gerrymandered the data even further so it doesn't include those that die in care homes or anywhere that's not in a hospital. Save your propaganda for the Daily Mail et al...
Indeed, UK is ranked sixth-highest nation in per capita deaths right now:
According to BBC News, the system by NHSX, the technology advisory group of the National Health Service, will work via Bluetooth. It will log when any two devices are close enough together for longer than an unspecified amount of time, and relay that information to the central database.
"Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs," an NHSX spokeswoman told the BBC, "and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life."
In comparison, Apple and Google's technology will allow for contact tracing to take place without an app having to launch or wake. For privacy reasons, the American technology firms also plan to conduct the actual contact tracing on each individual's device, so that data is not passed back to any one company's servers. [...]
France continues to prefer its own proposed system, and has asked Apple to alter iOS's restrictions on apps running in the background, in order for its app to work properly. "[Our] privacy principles are not going to change," responded Gary Davis, Apple's global director of privacy. "They are fundamental privacy principles that are needed to make this work."
"Yeaaahh. If you could just go ahead and leave the software development to software companies, that'd be greeaaat..."
Seriously, why would these government shops think they can do privacy-protecting software better than Apple, who also happens to be the platform owner? Its solution is guaranteed to be better. Thankfully Germany has seen the light and gotten on board.
The main motivation seems to be in the system being centralized vs decentralized, not the privacy issue:
"NHSX believes a centralised system will give it more insight into Covid-19's spread, and therefore how to evolve the app accordingly. "One of the advantages is that it's easier to audit the system and adapt it more quickly as scientific evidence accumulates," Prof Christophe Fraser, one of the epidemiologists advising NHSX, told the BBC. "The principal aim is to give notifications to people who are most at risk of having got infected, and not to people who are much lower risk. "It's probably easier to do that with a centralised system."
The decentralized approach could be more open to abuse. For example, a kid can sign up to the app, run around a populated area and claim to have been infected, which will alert people that they came in contact with someone infected with the virus, people can mistake flu symptoms for covid-19 and similarly pollute the data. A centralized sytem can check medical records to make sure the data is accurate and avoid sending notifications on suspect data.
All of these implementations have flaws, there's no fight over which is the better one, they are working together on all of them and all of them will be implemented. They all depend on the users informing the system of their infection, they all depend on user adoption and engagement and they are primarily assessing physical contact. The virus can live on surfaces for days:
What you said is completely untrue. Have you not done any reading on the topic? No, positive infections are NOT based on the honor system, so a mischievous kid cannot flag a bunch of infections. Read the articles on this very site.
As for surface life, they are updating that. The "can live for days" was based on lab conditions and lab-level readings. It's been updated to suggest 99% elimination on surfaces after 8 hours:
In the study the virus was down "a hundred fold on cardboard in eight hours," Williams said. "That means 99% of the virus was gone by eight hours, and the same is true on stainless steel and plastic."
...I'm certainly not one to minimize this global pandemic (my SO is an infectious diseases molecular biologist working on it), but the surface thing is not as bad as thought.
According to BBC News, the system by NHSX, the technology advisory group of the National Health Service, will work via Bluetooth. It will log when any two devices are close enough together for longer than an unspecified amount of time, and relay that information to the central database.
"Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs," an NHSX spokeswoman told the BBC, "and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life."
In comparison, Apple and Google's technology will allow for contact tracing to take place without an app having to launch or wake. For privacy reasons, the American technology firms also plan to conduct the actual contact tracing on each individual's device, so that data is not passed back to any one company's servers. [...]
France continues to prefer its own proposed system, and has asked Apple to alter iOS's restrictions on apps running in the background, in order for its app to work properly. "[Our] privacy principles are not going to change," responded Gary Davis, Apple's global director of privacy. "They are fundamental privacy principles that are needed to make this work."
"Yeaaahh. If you could just go ahead and leave the software development to software companies, that'd be greeaaat..."
Seriously, why would these government shops think they can do privacy-protecting software better than Apple, who also happens to be the platform owner? Its solution is guaranteed to be better. Thankfully Germany has seen the light and gotten on board.
Who said anything about government protecting anyones privacy? Certainly not the government.
And does the GPDR GDPR apply for this tracker (or other trackers, such as France is proposing)? I'm guessing NO.
The GDPR takes these situations into account and makes exceptions for them.
The U.K. is an embarrassment so far in its response to Covid-19.
Add this to the list. Every decision whether it was access to tests/lockdown/borders/protective equipment etc ... too little and very late.
We needed that app weeks ago here in the U.K. in combination with a viable and frequent test service.
Our economy is ruined , & thousands of unnecessary deaths which could have been prevented. The general public here still can’t get access to tests unless carted off to hospital. It’s a disgrace.
There is a reason countries like New Zealand did so well.
All I can say is whilst the U.K. is terrible it looks like there are plenty of countries making equally bad decisions.
Countries like Australia and NZ have done well because we are low population density islands at the arse end of the world at the tail end of summer. The key thing we did was lock down our borders. Everything else is just overkill, including randomly banning activities like golf or buying ammo in rural areas, just because the politicians don’t like it no doubt, and indeed promoting their own version of this stupid app.
Our economies will be ruined too. Through lockdown and unprecedented levels of government largesse, because politicians don’t do CBA, at least in the sense of anything but their political careers. We aren’t “all in this together”. There will be some large groups not impacted by this lockdown in any meaningful way other than missing out on their trip to Bali this year (eg public servants), and others whose future is ruined (eg many, many small businesses). I am confident my yet to be born grandchildren will be paying for this response well into their middle age.
Thing about this app is, the government can make all sorts of promises about its limited, one time use use, roolly and truully. But once it has been used, Pandora’s box has been opened. Policy creep will be inevitable. Once this is over this app will still be around. Perhaps it will next be used to track visa holders, parolees and those out on bail to start. Who could complain about that? Next step will be those with chronic but communicable disease, say HIV and Hep C patients. Then anyone with an STD. Is that ok so far? thise that aren’t up to date with their vaccines? Then it will be people that for one reason or another the government can whip up a dislike to, like say, JWs and Catholic priests.
They won’t need to be made to wear a badge like a Star on their clothes. The app will do it more surreptitiously and effectively.
According to BBC News, the system by NHSX, the technology advisory group of the National Health Service, will work via Bluetooth. It will log when any two devices are close enough together for longer than an unspecified amount of time, and relay that information to the central database.
"Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs," an NHSX spokeswoman told the BBC, "and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life."
In comparison, Apple and Google's technology will allow for contact tracing to take place without an app having to launch or wake. For privacy reasons, the American technology firms also plan to conduct the actual contact tracing on each individual's device, so that data is not passed back to any one company's servers. [...]
France continues to prefer its own proposed system, and has asked Apple to alter iOS's restrictions on apps running in the background, in order for its app to work properly. "[Our] privacy principles are not going to change," responded Gary Davis, Apple's global director of privacy. "They are fundamental privacy principles that are needed to make this work."
"Yeaaahh. If you could just go ahead and leave the software development to software companies, that'd be greeaaat..."
Seriously, why would these government shops think they can do privacy-protecting software better than Apple, who also happens to be the platform owner? Its solution is guaranteed to be better. Thankfully Germany has seen the light and gotten on board.
The main motivation seems to be in the system being centralized vs decentralized, not the privacy issue:
"NHSX believes a centralised system will give it more insight into Covid-19's spread, and therefore how to evolve the app accordingly. "One of the advantages is that it's easier to audit the system and adapt it more quickly as scientific evidence accumulates," Prof Christophe Fraser, one of the epidemiologists advising NHSX, told the BBC. "The principal aim is to give notifications to people who are most at risk of having got infected, and not to people who are much lower risk. "It's probably easier to do that with a centralised system."
The decentralized approach could be more open to abuse. For example, a kid can sign up to the app, run around a populated area and claim to have been infected, which will alert people that they came in contact with someone infected with the virus, people can mistake flu symptoms for covid-19 and similarly pollute the data. A centralized sytem can check medical records to make sure the data is accurate and avoid sending notifications on suspect data.
All of these implementations have flaws, there's no fight over which is the better one, they are working together on all of them and all of them will be implemented. They all depend on the users informing the system of their infection, they all depend on user adoption and engagement and they are primarily assessing physical contact. The virus can live on surfaces for days:
What you said is completely untrue. Have you not done any reading on the topic? No, positive infections are NOT based on the honor system, so a mischievous kid cannot flag a bunch of infections. Read the articles on this very site.
As for surface life, they are updating that. The "can live for days" was based on lab conditions and lab-level readings. It's been updated to suggest 99% elimination on surfaces after 8 hours:
In the study the virus was down "a hundred fold on cardboard in eight hours," Williams said. "That means 99% of the virus was gone by eight hours, and the same is true on stainless steel and plastic."
...I'm certainly not one to minimize this global pandemic (my SO is an infectious diseases molecular biologist working on it), but the surface thing is not as bad as thought.
The U.K. is an embarrassment so far in its response to Covid-19.
Add this to the list. Every decision whether it was access to tests/lockdown/borders/protective equipment etc ... too little and very late.
We needed that app weeks ago here in the U.K. in combination with a viable and frequent test service.
Our economy is ruined , & thousands of unnecessary deaths which could have been prevented. The general public here still can’t get access to tests unless carted off to hospital. It’s a disgrace.
There is a reason countries like New Zealand did so well.
All I can say is whilst the U.K. is terrible it looks like there are plenty of countries making equally bad decisions.
Thats not what the majority of the British public think with the British Government having record approval ratings on top if its huge election win in December. Its interesting that a Kings College, London and Ipsos Mori poll showed that that those attacking the governement and/or not oberserving social-distancing laws were either Labour Party supporters or Remoaners - which is applicable to you?
The UK is ahead of Belgium, Spain, Italy, and France in minimising the number of deaths per million population. This is despite the fact that the UK has the highest population density in Europe, which makes social-distancing more difficult and infection spread easier.
Whereas New Zeland has one of the lowest population densities on the planet...
The Scottish public think otherwise...and the date backs up the fact that the UK has one of the highest death rates as is and has gerrymandered the data even further so it doesn't include those that die in care homes or anywhere that's not in a hospital. Save your propaganda for the Daily Mail et al...
Just like everywhere else in Europe except Belgium, then.
The NHS have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted with peoples' data, not that they're alone in this, granted. From my own extensive and unfortunate experience they cannot even be trusted with their core mission of managing ones health. Moreover, the fact that this has been developed in concert with GCHQ should really set alarm bells ringing. I'd also like to know how they plan to get around bluetooth regulations on iOS if they're not opting for Apple's solution. They must be circumventing security features somehow if so, either that or they have come up with something rather clever because it shouldn't be feasible. Either way I have no intention of using it, and I doubt they'll get anywhere near 60% of the population to either, And I'd urge others to give serious thought prior to signing up as well. The British government should be bloody ashamed of the shambles they have made of this extremely difficult time so far. And for the huge loss of life for which they're mostly culpable. If this were a just world, Certain individuals would serve serious jail time because frankly it is absolutely criminal! And like others have said, a single decentralised solution would be much more effective and would allow for more timely deployment - when one considers that between Apple and Google they control the entire smartphone market. And thinking into the future when travel restrictions are relaxed it also would allow for cross border monitoring which will be essential. Politics should not come into it when lives are at stake, and given the choice I'm sure that the general population would rather the decentralised approach that has minimal opportunity for abuse. And the conservative regime have the audacity to keep droning on with the latest mantra telling the public to "stay home, protect the NHS, save lives" B**locks!
No chance I'll be downloading this, then. Unless Apple has exempted the NHS, apps on the App Store cannot continually poll for BT devices in the background.
There is no App Store guideline that prohibits this, so NHS does not need to be "exempted."
That's not true. Apps cannot look for or connect to new Bluetooth devices while running in the background, they can only maintain connections originally established while the app was in the foreground. This is not a guideline it is a Bluetooth API limitation. This is why France is trying to get Apple to "lift" this limitation for their tracing app - which is technically impossible, without downloading a modified version of the OS.
This is the same country that is burning down 5G towers because they spread Coronavirus.
It isn't the country that is burning down the 5G towers. It is a few people who seem to believe what a few 'Z' list celebs say on TV/Twitter over science. So far (AFAIK) none of the towers that have been attacked are actually 5G capable.
Every county has its share of numbskulls does it not?
I've yet to enable BT on any of my Apple devices apart from the ancient iPod that I use in the car (where it stays)
There is no reason for me to enable BT as I don't have any devices like earpods.
I won't be installing this app on my phone. Besides, half the time I go outside, I leave it at home so this tracking is really useless as far as I'm concerned as it seems to rely on people having their phone literally glued to an appendage 24/7.
No chance I'll be downloading this, then. Unless Apple has exempted the NHS, apps on the App Store cannot continually poll for BT devices in the background.
There is no App Store guideline that prohibits this, so NHS does not need to be "exempted."
That's not true. Apps cannot look for or connect to new Bluetooth devices while running in the background, they can only maintain connections originally established while the app was in the foreground. This is not a guideline it is a Bluetooth API limitation. This is why France is trying to get Apple to "lift" this limitation for their tracing app - which is technically impossible, without downloading a modified version of the OS.
He's right; you're wrong.
There is not App store guideline that will prevent the NHS from placing an COVID-19 tracking app on the app store. Every app on the store has to work within the limitations or restrictions of the operating system and the hardware. This is nothing new, and applies to every computer program ever written. It's the reason I can't put a DEC program on the app store: even if Apple did approve it, it wouldn't be able to run.
In this case, there is nothing from preventing NHSX from writing their own token system that loads all your contacts up to their central database if that's what they want to do, and if that's what you're happy for them to do. The restriction is that Apple won't allow them to build an app that drains your battery while doing it.
According to BBC News, the system by NHSX, the technology advisory group of the National Health Service, will work via Bluetooth. It will log when any two devices are close enough together for longer than an unspecified amount of time, and relay that information to the central database.
"Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs," an NHSX spokeswoman told the BBC, "and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life."
In comparison, Apple and Google's technology will allow for contact tracing to take place without an app having to launch or wake. For privacy reasons, the American technology firms also plan to conduct the actual contact tracing on each individual's device, so that data is not passed back to any one company's servers. [...]
France continues to prefer its own proposed system, and has asked Apple to alter iOS's restrictions on apps running in the background, in order for its app to work properly. "[Our] privacy principles are not going to change," responded Gary Davis, Apple's global director of privacy. "They are fundamental privacy principles that are needed to make this work."
"Yeaaahh. If you could just go ahead and leave the software development to software companies, that'd be greeaaat..."
Seriously, why would these government shops think they can do privacy-protecting software better than Apple, who also happens to be the platform owner? Its solution is guaranteed to be better. Thankfully Germany has seen the light and gotten on board.
The main motivation seems to be in the system being centralized vs decentralized, not the privacy issue:
"NHSX believes a centralised system will give it more insight into Covid-19's spread, and therefore how to evolve the app accordingly. "One of the advantages is that it's easier to audit the system and adapt it more quickly as scientific evidence accumulates," Prof Christophe Fraser, one of the epidemiologists advising NHSX, told the BBC. "The principal aim is to give notifications to people who are most at risk of having got infected, and not to people who are much lower risk. "It's probably easier to do that with a centralised system."
The decentralized approach could be more open to abuse. For example, a kid can sign up to the app, run around a populated area and claim to have been infected, which will alert people that they came in contact with someone infected with the virus, people can mistake flu symptoms for covid-19 and similarly pollute the data. A centralized sytem can check medical records to make sure the data is accurate and avoid sending notifications on suspect data.
All of these implementations have flaws, there's no fight over which is the better one, they are working together on all of them and all of them will be implemented. They all depend on the users informing the system of their infection, they all depend on user adoption and engagement and they are primarily assessing physical contact. The virus can live on surfaces for days:
The systems will be able to tell when some people came in contact with a surface and when others did but moving surfaces like containers and cash complicates things as well as how far it spreads in the air. Another question is what to do with the data. If the systems can reach a point where they can see the early stages of a spread, do they force those people into quarantine or do they just watch it spread. It's become pretty clear over the past few weeks that nobody has much of a clue on how to handle this kind of thing besides shutting everything down. I think it's sensible to try multiple options and see which gives the best results.
Yes, StrangeDays has comprehensively schooled you on this already, but I wanted to point out that while it's understandable that a layperson wouldn't understand how the Apple/Google system works, it's quite frightening that epidemiologist advising the NHS hasn't done his homework, or by the looks of it, even looked at the diagram.
The Google/Apple system is not an app; it's an API framework that tracking system developers plug into. What they've basically done is taken the grunt work out of the tracking, allowing the governments to focus on how the information is centrally stored. Yes, that's right; the governments will still need a central database to hold the tokens.
Here's how it looks from a user perspective:
You walk about. You come in contact with other people. Every person you come in contact with leaves a token on your phone, which will disappear after two weeks.
You feel a bit sick. You decide that it isn't the remains of last night's vindaloo you had for breakfast. You decide to go to the hospital for a test.
While you're being tested, a heroic NHS nurse asks if you'd line to sign up the NHS notification database. She explains that it will make sure that if you are tested positive for COVD-19 that anyone you have been in contact with will be notified if they've signed up to the same system. She explains that it's completely anonymous; all that your COVID contacts will see is an alert saying that they should get tested. You can't see the harm, so you sign up, take the test and go home.
A few days later, you get an email from the NHS notification system. It says you've tested positive. It includes some pertinent detail so you're sure the email is genuine. It asks if you would like to ANONYMOUSLY alert anyone you've been in contact with over the past fourteen days. You say yes, and you're taken to an NHS website which asks you for your NHS ID and your COVID test number. You enter them
And this is where the clever starts:
The takes you to an app on your phone with the authorisation details filled in (or asks you to fill them in again as a check). The app asks if it's okay to upload your phone token to the database
The NHS central database gets hold of an encoded version of your token, and puts it in the list of positives.
What happens with someone you've been with:
At the same time, you, and every other sign up is periodically polling for an update from the central database containing the tokens of new positives. The token is decoded and the phone looks to see if it matches any of the tokens stored on your phone (phones you've met). If it finds a match, the phone will alert you. A token on your phone is deleted after two weeks, so you will not receive an alert if you made contact with the person more than two weeks ago.
So what the government expert says is incorrect. I suspect the real problem is twofold:
The database is just a list of phone tokens stored under a rotating cryptographic key. It would be difficult (though I suspect not impossible) to tie this token back to a phone and its user. GCHQ would quite like s system that they could use to track who met who and when, without too much legwork.
The government has a desperate need to foster a 'Britain can do!' vibe in the wake of Austerity and Brexit, and their poor handling of the COVID crisis. What they won't tell you is that the system they put in place will not be written by a British company, it will most probably be written by the French, the Spanish or the Chinese.
PS: If you want privacy, don't use cell phones. Bluetooth is perfect for tracking.
A couple years ago, bluetooth sensors were installed allow transportation corridors to track vehicle traffic, reading signals from Bluetooth devices, so transportation planners could "see" traffic patterns, where people entered the corridor, where they exited the corridor, average speeds, etc.
There are certainly ways to do that: iBeacon APIs let an installed App with Bluetooth access register the “family” of beacons to listen out for, and then when they are heard some app code gets run to do something. Typical, of the third party beacon APIs, is to do a network connection and look up data (which can pass on info like the beacon details but also - if it has permission - where you are, trigger a local notification, that sort of thing). Some of those third party beacon APIs were also listening out for their own beacon families, and frankly it was all a bit of a mess.
I can see how an app developer working on this NHSX project might want to, in the background, emulate a beacon but also listen out for others (I’m not sure if you can do *that* without background execution, and for that if you’re not one of the valid AppStore use cases you would indeed need a dispensation). A smart designer would also, as the Apple/Google design does, realise that you need to change your Transmitted beacon ID regularly, because otherwise someone else (those pesky business football companies) will start listening too.
Here in London we had advertising companies installing Wi-Fi base stations on rubbish bins, just to listen out for phones as they passed by and collect their MAC addresses. So Apple and Google started using random MAC addresses when probing for Wi-Fi networks that they knew.
So the advertisers upped their game offering free Wi-Fi hotspots. Why? Because if you connected to their network and left it as auto-join then your phone would connect as you passed and disclose its real MAC address.
Indeed, the London Underground (to come back to the transportation subject that I’m replying to), who legitimately and usefully provide Wi-Fi on sub-surface stations, use this to then track phones as they move through the station tunnels and platforms, to model passenger movement.
Mine’s the phone with auto-join disabled on public Wi-Fi networks,
Clearly you also know nothing about history. The Magna Carta was a landmark in the establishment of the rights of the citizen versus the state, not just in Britian but internationally - your Declaration of Independence drew upon it.
I seem to recall from my history lessons that the Magna Carta only really protected the nobles from the King, and not "the people." After all, what need of rights had the serfs with the nobles there to protect them? The notion that the Magna Carta was based on some ancient English constitution that protected the rights of the people is a myth, believed at the time, but unsupported by any actual historical document.
The American Constitution drew inspiration from this "myth" though, and did it properly, however (deliberately by those seeking to destroy it) misinterpreted it might be in the present day.
According to BBC News, the system by NHSX, the technology advisory group of the National Health Service, will work via Bluetooth. It will log when any two devices are close enough together for longer than an unspecified amount of time, and relay that information to the central database.
"Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs," an NHSX spokeswoman told the BBC, "and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life."
In comparison, Apple and Google's technology will allow for contact tracing to take place without an app having to launch or wake. For privacy reasons, the American technology firms also plan to conduct the actual contact tracing on each individual's device, so that data is not passed back to any one company's servers. [...]
France continues to prefer its own proposed system, and has asked Apple to alter iOS's restrictions on apps running in the background, in order for its app to work properly. "[Our] privacy principles are not going to change," responded Gary Davis, Apple's global director of privacy. "They are fundamental privacy principles that are needed to make this work."
"Yeaaahh. If you could just go ahead and leave the software development to software companies, that'd be greeaaat..."
Seriously, why would these government shops think they can do privacy-protecting software better than Apple, who also happens to be the platform owner? Its solution is guaranteed to be better. Thankfully Germany has seen the light and gotten on board.
They don't.
They value people's lives more than people's privacy.
Virus is without borders. When someone goes to other countries, the local government app will not work. That is why it is so important to have a global platform.
just look at China, each city/province has its own app. People is perfectly fine in a province suddenly can’t go to other provinces.
China is a good example of what don’t work and fail. Don’t act like China.
LOL.... China acted decisively and brought the virus under control -- people have largely returned to normal and industry is back up and running. Not so elsewhere -- here we are still mostly shut down and have killed 50,000 people through inaction and misplaced priorities. We should be copying China rather than attacking them.
"NHSX maintains that it will be able to audit the data, and adapt the system more quickly, if details are held on its servers. "It's probably easier to do that with a centralized system," NHSX advisor Professor Christophe Fraser, told the BBC."
Probably the key point. There's a treasure trove of data there, and when it's uploaded to their servers the government will be able to mine it to their heart's content....
The NHS is already the central depository of health records of every person in the UK -- just as your records are under the control of private industry here in the U.S. and free to be sold or distributed as they see fit.
Of the two, the NHS or American private industry, I would trust the NHS -- they dealt with privacy a long time ago.
According to BBC News, the system by NHSX, the technology advisory group of the National Health Service, will work via Bluetooth. It will log when any two devices are close enough together for longer than an unspecified amount of time, and relay that information to the central database.
"Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs," an NHSX spokeswoman told the BBC, "and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life."
In comparison, Apple and Google's technology will allow for contact tracing to take place without an app having to launch or wake. For privacy reasons, the American technology firms also plan to conduct the actual contact tracing on each individual's device, so that data is not passed back to any one company's servers. [...]
France continues to prefer its own proposed system, and has asked Apple to alter iOS's restrictions on apps running in the background, in order for its app to work properly. "[Our] privacy principles are not going to change," responded Gary Davis, Apple's global director of privacy. "They are fundamental privacy principles that are needed to make this work."
"Yeaaahh. If you could just go ahead and leave the software development to software companies, that'd be greeaaat..."
Seriously, why would these government shops think they can do privacy-protecting software better than Apple, who also happens to be the platform owner? Its solution is guaranteed to be better. Thankfully Germany has seen the light and gotten on board.
They don't.
They value people's lives more than people's privacy.
Does it have to be one or the other? Nope. It's cute when you say trite stuff like that. Thankfully the founding fathers thought differently. "Give me liberty or give me death"
If centralized tracking (less privacy) keeps people from signing up then more people might die than if decentralized (more private) Google/Apple exposure tracing is used by more people because it's trusted more and pervasive.
Comments
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
As for surface life, they are updating that. The "can live for days" was based on lab conditions and lab-level readings. It's been updated to suggest 99% elimination on surfaces after 8 hours:
In the study the virus was down "a hundred fold on cardboard in eight hours," Williams said. "That means 99% of the virus was gone by eight hours, and the same is true on stainless steel and plastic."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/health/groceries-takeout-coronavirus-wellness-scn-trnd/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2w_WMe_MEDa6MCA5XPzQLKtCPN1T0uAOCJFwlS9dGRVxr0ocg443SHfz0
...I'm certainly not one to minimize this global pandemic (my SO is an infectious diseases molecular biologist working on it), but the surface thing is not as bad as thought.
Thing about this app is, the government can make all sorts of promises about its limited, one time use use, roolly and truully.
But once it has been used, Pandora’s box has been opened. Policy creep will be inevitable. Once this is over this app will still be around. Perhaps it will next be used to track visa holders, parolees and those out on bail to start. Who could complain about that? Next step will be those with chronic but communicable disease, say HIV and Hep C patients. Then anyone with an STD. Is that ok so far? thise that aren’t up to date with their vaccines? Then it will be people that for one reason or another the government can whip up a dislike to, like say, JWs and Catholic priests.
B**locks!
He's right; you're wrong.
There is not App store guideline that will prevent the NHS from placing an COVID-19 tracking app on the app store. Every app on the store has to work within the limitations or restrictions of the operating system and the hardware. This is nothing new, and applies to every computer program ever written. It's the reason I can't put a DEC program on the app store: even if Apple did approve it, it wouldn't be able to run.
In this case, there is nothing from preventing NHSX from writing their own token system that loads all your contacts up to their central database if that's what they want to do, and if that's what you're happy for them to do. The restriction is that Apple won't allow them to build an app that drains your battery while doing it.
Yes, StrangeDays has comprehensively schooled you on this already, but I wanted to point out that while it's understandable that a layperson wouldn't understand how the Apple/Google system works, it's quite frightening that epidemiologist advising the NHS hasn't done his homework, or by the looks of it, even looked at the diagram.
The Google/Apple system is not an app; it's an API framework that tracking system developers plug into. What they've basically done is taken the grunt work out of the tracking, allowing the governments to focus on how the information is centrally stored. Yes, that's right; the governments will still need a central database to hold the tokens.
Here's how it looks from a user perspective:
You walk about. You come in contact with other people. Every person you come in contact with leaves a token on your phone, which will disappear after two weeks.
You feel a bit sick. You decide that it isn't the remains of last night's vindaloo you had for breakfast. You decide to go to the hospital for a test.
While you're being tested, a heroic NHS nurse asks if you'd line to sign up the NHS notification database. She explains that it will make sure that if you are tested positive for COVD-19 that anyone you have been in contact with will be notified if they've signed up to the same system. She explains that it's completely anonymous; all that your COVID contacts will see is an alert saying that they should get tested. You can't see the harm, so you sign up, take the test and go home.
A few days later, you get an email from the NHS notification system. It says you've tested positive. It includes some pertinent detail so you're sure the email is genuine. It asks if you would like to ANONYMOUSLY alert anyone you've been in contact with over the past fourteen days. You say yes, and you're taken to an NHS website which asks you for your NHS ID and your COVID test number. You enter them
And this is where the clever starts:
The takes you to an app on your phone with the authorisation details filled in (or asks you to fill them in again as a check). The app asks if it's okay to upload your phone token to the database
The NHS central database gets hold of an encoded version of your token, and puts it in the list of positives.
What happens with someone you've been with:
At the same time, you, and every other sign up is periodically polling for an update from the central database containing the tokens of new positives. The token is decoded and the phone looks to see if it matches any of the tokens stored on your phone (phones you've met). If it finds a match, the phone will alert you. A token on your phone is deleted after two weeks, so you will not receive an alert if you made contact with the person more than two weeks ago.
So what the government expert says is incorrect. I suspect the real problem is twofold:
The database is just a list of phone tokens stored under a rotating cryptographic key. It would be difficult (though I suspect not impossible) to tie this token back to a phone and its user. GCHQ would quite like s system that they could use to track who met who and when, without too much legwork.
The government has a desperate need to foster a 'Britain can do!' vibe in the wake of Austerity and Brexit, and their poor handling of the COVID crisis. What they won't tell you is that the system they put in place will not be written by a British company, it will most probably be written by the French, the Spanish or the Chinese.
I can see how an app developer working on this NHSX project might want to, in the background, emulate a beacon but also listen out for others (I’m not sure if you can do *that* without background execution, and for that if you’re not one of the valid AppStore use cases you would indeed need a dispensation). A smart designer would also, as the Apple/Google design does, realise that you need to change your Transmitted beacon ID regularly, because otherwise someone else (those pesky business football companies) will start listening too.
The American Constitution drew inspiration from this "myth" though, and did it properly, however (deliberately by those seeking to destroy it) misinterpreted it might be in the present day.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/28/apple-api/
LOL.... China acted decisively and brought the virus under control -- people have largely returned to normal and industry is back up and running. Not so elsewhere -- here we are still mostly shut down and have killed 50,000 people through inaction and misplaced priorities. We should be copying China rather than attacking them.
It's cute when you say trite stuff like that. Thankfully the founding fathers thought differently. "Give me liberty or give me death"
If centralized tracking (less privacy) keeps people from signing up then more people might die than if decentralized (more private) Google/Apple exposure tracing is used by more people because it's trusted more and pervasive.