UK coronavirus tracking app - discussion

[souljacker]

because of this bit

Ah, right. That makes sense. Also means the gov can blame google and apple I suppose.

It's odd we didn't take the offer of help from Google and Apple though.

 

[weltweit]

..
It's odd we didn't take the offer of help from Google and Apple though.

I mean, what do they know?

 

[frogwoman]

So it wont work unless you actually have it open rather than in the background? My one on the privacy is that the government tracks all our data anyway but if it doesn't actually work that's a different story. Surely they'll release an update or this is just a beta test version?

 

[Teaboy]

It's odd we didn't take the offer of help from Google and Apple though.

Yes, it would be nice to understand why. There has been a fair bit of public money doshed out to mates of the government already. It just looks suspicious. I have a cheap smartphone with a shit battery which works fine for me. If my phone is going to have to be awake all day it won't last more than 3 hours.

 

[BristolEcho]

I think anyone who has been to their GP after a hospital stint only to find out the GP has no record of said hospital stay because the IT systems don't join up properly would also have doubts about this. And that's happened to me more than once. How hard can it be to track someone by their NHS number across multiple providers?

Well it is pretty hard and one of the issues is consent.

I agree with what you are saying though.

 

[wayward bob]

I dunno. Even if the app isn't built by idiots, there will be a lot of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
I've worked on a few govuk projects and this one gives me the shivers.

 

[souljacker]

Yes, it would be nice to understand why. There has been a fair bit of public money doshed out to mates of the government already. It just looks suspicious. I have a cheap smartphone with a shit battery which works fine for me. If my phone is going to have to be awake all day it won't last more than 3 hours.

It possibly won't do BTLE anyway. It's part of the Bluetooth 4.0 specs so you'd need to have that as a minimum.

 

[Teaboy]

It possibly won't do BTLE anyway. It's part of the Bluetooth 4.0 specs so you'd need to have that as a minimum.

How do you know whether you have that?

 

[mauvais]

because of this bit

I'm a software engineer and I've been specialising in Android since it came out in 2009. The details in this snippet are sort of correct, but in their sum total don't necessarily amount to a lack of technical feasibility.

Personally I think contact tracing apps probably won't work, but for more fundamental reasons rather than whether it's allowed to run in the background or not.

 

[2hats]

They don't take any data

No. You hand it over to them.

Maybe it's not intended to be effective, just make us feel more confident going back to work...

To quote a foremost computer and security engineering expert it's "do-something-itis".

Reports already of scammers abusing the opportunity.

Dutch simulations suggest that contact tracing apps don’t work particularly well. If even maybe only 60% of the population use them diligently then the overall contribution to tracing success is minimal.

 

[souljacker]

How do you know whether you have that?

Google your phone specs. It will be listed in the same place as where the WiFi specs are shown

 

[Petcha]

No. You hand it over to them.

Well, no. As far as I understand it, you give them the first half of your postcode and obviously your phone number, not particularly invasive, nothing else. Which is partly the reason they went with the centralised version than the decentralised Apple/Google model.

 

[souljacker]

Well, no. As far as I understand it, you give them the first half of your postcode and obviously your phone number, not particularly invasive, nothing else. Which is partly the reason they went with the centralised version than the decentralised Apple/Google model.

You don't need to give your phone number.

 

[editor]

 

[emanymton]

No because I do no trust them to produce anything workable. And don't use Bluetooth for anything so would never remember to turn it on anyway.

 

[Petcha]

View attachment 210938

Well, he's wrong. It doesn't trace either your movements or contacts..

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

It’s a no from me.

 

[shifting gears]

Would’ve added interest by being able to see who among voters is a key worker - that includes me, for the record.

I haven’t done any real research into the app yet, but some quite blasé attitudes on display already, perhaps mostly from those who don’t go to work surrounded by highly vulnerable people on a daily basis.

 

[existentialist]

Nope. And not even on the technical points - I have zero trust in this government not to misuse, lose, share, or just completely cock up with the data this system gathers, and the uses it may be put to. They are, effectively, asking us to trust them and put our freedoms on the line when it is patently obvious that we couldn't trust them to take us into this thing better equipped and better organised - we're being asked to pay for their mistakes, and there's a big risk that it'll just be another mistake.

 

[Supine]

I'll use it and can't really see what the problem is in terms of privacy. Presuming it works of coarse.

Just as long as it doesn't snoop on my WhatsApp drug deals

 

[weltweit]

It must be a pretty state of affairs that I would trust a tracking app by Google more than I would one by my own government. It is a maybe by me, I haven't yet decided.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Will the Google/Apple one be functional here? If so I wouldn't be surprised to see it become the one in use in practice here regardless of what the government say.

 

[Sunray]

Are we going to sit in the house for a year? I don't think that's a workable strategy either. So something is a start. Better to fail quickly than try to be perfect from the start.

Certainly, something that can be taken into mobile phone design into the future. We have pandemics at least once every 300 years appx. Pandemics That Changed History

Unless you explicitly switch off Bluetooth, devices are constantly listening for advertising requests. The scanning is something the user does when they search for say their speaker, the listener, the speaker, detects a request and responds. If you were to change the phones Bluetooth name to an ID then its technically very possible.


From Wiki

A study by beacon software company Aislelabs reported that peripherals such as proximity beacons usually function for 1–2 years powered by a 1,000mAh coin cell battery.[47] This is possible because of the power efficiency of Bluetooth Low Energy protocol, which only transmits small packets as compared to Bluetooth Classic which is also suitable for audio and high bandwidth data.

In contrast, a continuous scan for the same beacons in central role can consume 1,000 mAh in a few hours. Android and iOS devices also have very different battery impact depending on type of scans and the number of Bluetooth Low Energy devices in the vicinity.[48] With newer chipsets and advances in software, by 2014 both Android and iOS phones had negligible power consumption in real-life Bluetooth Low Energy use

 

[2hats]

Well, no. As far as I understand it, you give them the first half of your postcode and obviously your phone number, not particularly invasive, nothing else. Which is partly the reason they went with the centralised version than the decentralised Apple/Google model.

You don't understand it. At least try reading the NCSC technical overview. The whole point of the exercise is to be able to reconstruct your associations.

The project is vulnerable to and indeed appears to be aspiring towards mission creep. Such behaviours always make re-identification even easier. Indeed, when questioned about further features in recent days, the developers are on record as saying "it would be very useful epidemiologically if people were willing to offer us not just the anonymous proximity contacts but the location of where those contacts took place".

 

[Petcha]

Is one of those hats constructed of tin foil?

 

[2hats]

Is one of those hats constructed of tin foil?

For more information please reread the thread.

 

[shifting gears]

Is one of those hats constructed of tin foil?

as seen up thread, I’m broadly-speaking in support of using an app of this kind, but 2hats is one of the most informed posters here, if he’s sharing links you can be assured of their veracity, so give it a rest with the tinfoil shtick

 

[Petcha]

as seen up thread, I’m broadly speaking in support of using an app of this kind, but 2hats is one of the most informed posters here, if he’s sharing links you can be assured of their veracity, so give it as rest with the tinfoil shtick

Apologies. I don't respond well to condescension. I should know my place.

 

[Petcha]

Oh. And he's wrong.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

I know who'd back if I had to make a bet right now.