Meh, let him retire in peace. I am sure he has made some daft comments and decisions, yet I am also sure he has done some good in his career. Everyone will have done something daft or cringeworthy in their career. As long as he held accountable and can improve. I absolutely hate when a politician does something wrong and gets a the sack(with a golden handshake) instead of having to learn from the mistake and having to deal with fixing it.
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Apple Blocks Update to UK NHS Contact Tracing App for Breaking Location Data Collection Rules
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Where exactly is there any evidence of the UK government forcing people to have the app and threatening them with arrest? Stop talking complete nonsense
Whats his son to do with anything? Judge a person on their own merits and faults. And I would find it hard to believe that a politician has came to power without a single vote.
Usually happens when a politician dies and then another takes over. Similar: Gordon Brown taking over from Tony Blair etc.
I was one of the early rejecters of the app, because I knew this would happen. Thank god for Apple.
The app in the coming months will also be morphed into your one stop shop health passport. COVID vaccine, flu vaccine et al, check ins, health status. All under the banner of 'for the greater good'
The app in the coming months will also be morphed into your one stop shop health passport. COVID vaccine, flu vaccine et al, check ins, health status. All under the banner of 'for the greater good'
You may be right, NHS patient data was sold en masse to the US for a token payment of £1. That's £1 for everyone's details, not £1 per person.
Britain gave Palantir access to sensitive medical records of Covid-19 patients in £1 deal
Peter Thiel's Palantir was given access to NHS patient records that contain citizen's contact details, gender, race, religion, occupation, physical and mental health condition, as well as past criminal offenses.
They agreed to the terms of service. They tried to pull an Epic.
The English Track and Trace system is a mess.
It's not a surprise that they thought that they could force this through despite (presumably) people from Apple and Google explaining upfront in 2020 how their Covid API works and what was and was not acceptable.
These were the same people who decided they knew better than Apple and Google, ignored their API and built their own app, which was a disaster in its limited beta and had to be scrapped. Which then necessitated a rebuild last summer using the Google Apple API meaning that the app only launched in fall 2020 in England.
It's almost is if the English Track and Trace is run by people who are friends of high-up people in the government first and foremost, rather than people who are very well qualified to understand to set up and run track and trace systems.
(I live in England as you might've gathered).
It's not a surprise that they thought that they could force this through despite (presumably) people from Apple and Google explaining upfront in 2020 how their Covid API works and what was and was not acceptable.
These were the same people who decided they knew better than Apple and Google, ignored their API and built their own app, which was a disaster in its limited beta and had to be scrapped. Which then necessitated a rebuild last summer using the Google Apple API meaning that the app only launched in fall 2020 in England.
It's almost is if the English Track and Trace is run by people who are friends of high-up people in the government first and foremost, rather than people who are very well qualified to understand to set up and run track and trace systems.
(I live in England as you might've gathered).
And yet, Apple themselves collect the location of all iPhones, including the MAC addresses of all nearby devices close to your phone and geotags them too. In addition, it sends data back to Apple on average every 4 minutes without user consent or any way to disable it. My reference for these claims is this research paper, available for free here: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
Apple cannot block an App like this in China or in Singapore, etc., where government can mandate app store policies. Otherwise, they lose their license to operate and get steep fines.
Being from the industry I can categorically say this project is shameful. Anything government is always more expensive thanks to the bureaucratic processes rathe than the actual implementation of it.
I'm pretty sure going against the UK government is going to explode in Apple's face here.
Apple refusing to add in backdoors to the OS that compromise device security for millions of citizens to find the isolated few criminals is one thing. Refusing to permit government health apps to be installed in a global pandemic is another.
It should be up to users whether they want to compromise on their privacy here, and in particular, they should make that decision by voting for their government officials. As far as I'm aware, the UK is a properly functioning democracy - if their leaders decided this is an acceptable measure to take for health reasons and they're not getting voted out, then it's the will of the people and Apple should stay out of it.
Sure. Unless it was made mandatory. Either you have the app in use, or find yourself in a state-operated quarantine center. That is actually what has happened in some countries which take a different view on privacy and citizens’ rights.
My personal view is that this epidemic is not bad enough to warrant a 1984 style tracking. But there is a line between privacy and tracking efficiency, and you need to choose your position on that line. You can’t have both.
IDK, before you bash the UK government for being wasteful and slow, I think you should look at Apple's own efforts to do the same.
Apple took a year to roll their API out. It's still not available to the vast majority of the population. The disease was in no way shape or form contained. Has a single life been saved by Apple's efforts with the API?
Apple has been a colossal screw up with this. In fact, we're insufficiently cynical here. Apple intentionally screwed up completely. Apple has benefitted enormously from their own screw up. Apple hardware sales are through the roof as schools and businesses are switching to being entirely remote. Google's service sales have also exploded.
We have made a colossal mistake in handing over too much power to Apple and Google. These companies have no interest in ending the pandemic - they have enormous incentives to ensure it lasts as long as possible and is as out of control as possible.
Decided? Overlooked through their usual ignorance more like! Or, in fact a deliberate attempt to sneak something out that we the public aren’t aware of. How many examples of the lies they’ve peddled do you need to acknowledge the corrupt nature of the UK government? Good on Apple for disallowing it.
The forum seem to greatly “agree” with your opinion I see. Unfortunately, this is the sort of mentality the UK government is having recently.
The "disagree" votes that you got are indeed embarrassing. The Apple/Google API keep track of random IDs of phones that were near your phone. The location of either phone is not and doesn't need to be recorded for that, both Android and iPhone hardware can detect that there is another phone with Bluetooth and the tracking API in a few meters distance, with not a clue who it is. And if you get infected, you send your phone's random ID to a server, and every phone suddenly knows it was near the phone of someone with Covid. The random ID changes every few minutes, so nobody can find out that we were close together for some time. The absolutely only thing known is that my phone was near the phone of someone who got infected. No idea who that was, or where that was.
Interpreting those alerts is actually very simple: Stay at home, avoid contact with anyone else, get tested. It's just in the nature of UK politicians that they need _more information_. You got an alert that tells you "you were too close to someone who is infected", that's enough to act on.