UK coronavirus tracking app - discussion
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It's only 'half-understood' in the sense that some details aren't clear, and you can't divorce the current crisis and measures to contain it (many of which are necessarily authoritarian) from the context of a government that's only in office because it's engaged in highly dubious (for which read 'criminal' in some cases) collection, manipulation and deployment of personal data.
If an app is needed then someone else should provide it. Personally I'm deeply sceptical of the big tech firms and would prefer not to give them that data either, but in the present situation it's the lesser of two evils.
2hats
Dust.
The ROK app approach is quite different to those floated in the UK (and many other 'western' countries). No bluetooth tracking but self-notification of symptoms and aggressive pursual of cases. All arriving travellers are required to use it. The movements of the infected are then tracked (GPS, cell phone positioning records, credit card transactions, etc) and a detailed report of their movements and identity (surname, gender, age, area of residence and purchasing history) is flooded to mobile phone handsets in the visited areas to alert potentially affected members of the public so they can head direct to testing.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yeah, this bit struck me about the IoW test area. It's as far from a big city environment as you can get, really. How useful is it to test how the thing might work in cities?
crossthebreeze
Well-Known Member
There is an apple/google one and an open-source one being developed also. I thought the point is was that everyone needs to have the same app though?
neonwilderness
What would Badgers do?
There’s two different ways of processing the data. Apple/Google are working on providing tools to help with the decentralised model (decision making happening on your own device), but this would still need an app to be developed which I don’t think is happening in the UK. The Govt. are going with the centralised model (they collect the data and decide who might be infected).
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Much more intrusive data wise and much more of a personal impact. Sounds like something nobody on here would be keen for.
Which leaves us with what now we're in this situation?
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Plenty are happening already. Many people are already getting by thanks to local mutual aid organisations which sprang up overnight with zero impetus or support from central or local government. Everyone who has confined themselves to quarters because they suspect they have the virus has ultimately done so of their own volition. If people were waiting for either a confirmed diagnosis or actual legal compulsion to stay home then all the sick people would still be roaming around spreading the virus. 'Lockdown' is to all intents and purposes a voluntary, decentralised phenomenon in this country. The government only made quasi-official what increasing numbers of people were doing anyway. Their input has been a set of arbitrary, often contradictory, sometimes utterly absurd rules which exist only on paper and which serve little purpose except to make it look like they're responsible for the changes in behaviour which have finally started reducing the death rate.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
If the other ones gain traction, hopefully it will put pressure on the govt.
But skimming the technical issues, the whole thing seems to be of limited use in any case.
Sounds a bit like the "friend nearby alert" apps from when mobile phones were new tech ...
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
Blimey there's potential for chaos here - if someone hacks the network ...
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
A highly motivated population has been let down badly by the government, basically.
That's what has irritated me most about a lot of the behavioural science stuff they've been obsessed with. It's largely been about finding ways to coerce people. And while they were sitting around discussing that, people were getting on with doing stuff themselves.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
It's not hacking I worry about so much as the people who made the damn thing passing data around one way while they pass the coke spoon the other.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Abosolutely. And I do think the constant nonsense pronouncements from on high are contributing to 'lockdown fatigue' by creating the impression we're doing all this for the political careers of a handful of perfidious fuckwits and not for each other. It's looking increasingly likely that the state, allied with businesses, will actively undermine the efforts of the public. It is to be hoped that the public resists this, just as they resisted Johnson and pals' efforts to force the country to stay open. Public-facing businesses didn't close because they were compelled to by the state, they closed because staff didn't want to go in and because the risk of PR blowback was too great. Tim Martin wasn't penalised for refusing to close his pubs after being 'ordered' to by the state, because the order was never real.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's not actually a bad thing that not everything has been government-led. Maybe the government might have got itself together to lead something along the line, though.
sunnysidedown
caput mortuum
Privacy concerns are not the top issue for me. I would rather not partake in a project to effectively test and circuit-train a dubious algorithm. I think the money would be better spent on providing PPE to all front-line workers (which would be far better at stopping a virus that's full transmission and incubation period is still an unknown).
And what's the next step? (there's always a next step), your phone alerts you to self-quarantine, will the phone then report you if the GPS picks you up leaving your home? what about the bracelets that some young funky start up company develop to provide to those without a 'smart' phone? should I expect some of the left/anarchists on here to be supporting the move to implement the use of those too?
There isn't even a reliable 100% test for either the virus or the anti-bodies. They will also be lucky if they succeed in developing a vaccine (and not just any time soon). the old saying (it's pretty old now isn't it) there's an app for that really won't help with what we have to face up to, if anything it will only add to making things worse (imo).
Slightly off-topic, but feast your eyes in this baby, it's the main bit of the Imperial Model:
This does not inspire much confidence in me.
This does not inspire much confidence in me.
I'm curious about those who are open to being persuaded. Persuaded by what and whom, exactly? A few soothing platitudes from nice Mr Johnson? An interminable blogpost from clever Mr Cummings? Reassurance from the oh-so-competent Health Secretary? After all, they all seem to know what they're doing, and they'd never lie to anyone, would they...
Cid
Proper break this time
True to an extent, but even government support is lacking. By that I mean stuff like ‘and we all see the example of x as a leading figure in their community/industry and we’ll do y to support z in doing the same’. And without that kind of feedback and more national coordination everyone doing much more than the bare minimum is doing so in the dark to an extent. That will be especially true when businesses start going back... if your competitors are ending wfh, then of course you do the same. Otherwise you’ll look like some weird holdout.
As I’ve said throughout, proper communication is vital, and this government seems to have taken exactly the wrong approach.
mauvais
on reddit or something
That's how software development works. Doesn't really tell you anything, good or bad, other than someone tested it to some unknown extent.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
For me it's being persuaded that it's part of a package that we need to stop the death rate spiking again. CV isn't going away and the next year plus is going to be about making some shitty choices to try and stop something terrible happening again. Not ideal and I'd rather we weren't in this position, but we are, and unless I see something else on the table there isn't much choice but to use what's there.
Nice patronising post btw, yup we're all that gullible.
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I'm one of those and its a combination of this...
But also if I read some independent reviews of the system by trusted independent experts than for me as a lay person that would be enough I think.
The major problem for me is the government has gone about it in pretty much the same way they've gone about everything in this crisis. A total lack of honesty and transparency whilst seeing it as an a fantastic opportunity to financially reward friends and supporters. Raab was asked yesterday about it and why they hadn't adopted the apple / android version. His response was basically 'We have a different criteria which you're not entitled to be told about and probably too stupid to understand'. Its no way to go about things if you want to engender trust in something.
I have come from a starting point of being open to the app, in fact I was pretty certain I would be using it. Now that all these question marks are being raised about basic functionality, effectiveness, privacy, data usage and the (cough) 'tendering process', I am more like "I don't think so!".
However, if it was shown to a)work (both in terms of people's phones and in terms of notifying people of the potentially risky contacts) and b)some more robust checks and balances (I don't know what those would look like specifically) were put in place about use of the data and c)that it really was supported by a massive public health effort in terms of contact tracing and supporting people with self-isolation when necessary (with adequate 'sick' pay and potentially more adequate accommodation), and d)more transparency and better communication, I might rethink again.
But yeah, given that I fully agree with your questions above, this happening and/or the case being made persuasively i.e.trustworthy to me doesn't seem that likely...
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Lack of honesty or transparency just seems the default reflex reaction. This isn't about national security. We're not at war. There are no enemies to keep information from. There are no excuses not to employ total honesty and transparency.
Reality with Raab, probably, is that he is too stupid to understand it, so he couldn't explain it to us even if he wanted to, which he doesn't cos he's a cunt.
No it isn't! It's kind of typical of what software looks like in a academic setting, as in where it's not someone's main job and they don't really know what they're doing, but that file is horrendous! Just the length should be a warning, the fact that all the logic is in one place, there's no separation of concerns, there's no testability, the cyclomatic complexity is off the scale.
And what's revealing about the comment I quoted is that it suggests that whoever it is, is just poking at it with changes until it 'seems' to be doing the right thing, which is probably all that is possible because of it's manifold deficiencies, only some of which I referred to above.
mauvais
on reddit or something
I meant the comment alone. We don't know from that alone that it isn't in the context of structured tests and so on. People write shit commit messages.
I have had a skim over the whole thing since and your outline of it is a fair one. It's very far from good software engineering, it's hacked together as you describe, but then it's not meant to be, its main concern is data science rather than SE best practice. That doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, just that it's a really bad approach to writing maintainable software.
You might be right overall too, maybe it was just fiddled with until it produced something that matched expectations, but we lack the context of the modelling goals to really assess that one. Possibly rigour is externally applied to inputs, outputs and verification.
For me it's being persuaded that it's part of a package that we need to stop the death rate spiking again. CV isn't going away and the next year plus is going to be about making some shitty choices to try and stop something terrible happening again. Not ideal and I'd rather we weren't in this position, but we are, and unless I see something else on the table there isn't much choice but to use what's there.
Nice patronising post btw, yup we're all that gullible.
I'm sorry, but assuming anything other than the worst of this government and its motives is gullible - or rather naive. No-one's suggesting there aren't shitty choices to be made, but the people making them now are not to be trusted with anything and it is not sensible just to shrug and go along with this.
Jeremiah18.17
Well-Known Member
The problem is, the shitty app is probably a win-win for the govt - I.e if enough of us refuse to use it, they blame the second wave of Covid on the public, or more likely, people concerned at civil liberties issues and the left who “sabotaged” it and “misled” people. If lots of people use it, their mates get a pay off, there is loads of data for unscrupulous mining and they STILL get to blame the second wave on the “disruptive minority” refusing to use it, who are even more isolated and targeted as “civil libertarians & leftists” in this scenario.
Utter bastards. But then we already knew that.
Utter bastards. But then we already knew that.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
I half like that post - the second bit.
As for the first bit, seeing the government as a monolithic entity with all the same motives is too simplistic I think. There's competing and contradictory elements within it, and to think nothing but the worst of it all means that if you went by that then nobody within it would have any concern at all for preventing deaths or infections, which is clearly not true. What you're saying just makes me think you've got some cartoon hedge fund Tory who's just counting the money to be made in your head whereas the reality is much more nuanced than that.
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