Apple Blocks Update to UK NHS Contact Tracing App for Breaking Location Data Collection Rules

[DeepIn2U]

Protecting health and saving lives is more important than blindly enforcing the rules. Apple & Google need to be more flexible.

Nobody is forcing rules blindly. I think you’re the one with a blind view of things.

an “alert” doesn’t necessarily mean that person has Covid-19 just symptoms. It could mean they have BUT it could also mean they don’t.

issue isn’t rules here. Tracking a person whom “potentially” has COVID-19 only violates their privacy, in no way will that saves lives, it’ll only add to data and add to the lack of fact of the data. It would be hypothetical.

human nature or stupidity (we seen a wide range of this all over) from antimaskers or coughed or sneezers ignorantly doing this to others without any consideration or common decency. Not everyone is like this or does it. Not everyone that does IS infected.

forcing lives is more important than the privacy (legal not illegal wrong doings of ones private life) could lead to major actions of regimes and factions that choose to decide a certain people’s lives are worth more than others - we as human beings of already gone through 2 world wars because of this, let’s not blindly go into the dark like that.

mom a lose key having the city alone may be somewhat helpful but unless a doctor or hospital team fully confirms one has COVID-19 there is no point nor right to track someone.

I do not believe this is that simple.

If we say that health and saving lives is the most important value above everything else, our world should look very different from what it is now. Alcohol and unhealthy food should be banned today, walking 10 000 steps a day should be mandatory, maximum speed limit 20 mph.

Health is an important value, but we have already accepted that even there we can make compromises. Privacy is an important value, as well, and tracking puts these two values in conflict. Making that compromise is a matter of values, and there is no "of course" in the answer.

It’s strange that alcohol stores and pot stores in countries where it’s legal are still considered important. Addiction (alcohol) is viscous but maybe gov should look into helping those with such - should they come for add than allowing them to weaken their immune system ??

 

[Kabeyun]

You love us really

I do, actually.

 

[Shirasaki]

Glad you asked!

The API traces possible situations where the virus could be transmitted. It does not trace contacts at a level which would be useful in tracking the transmission chains backwards or forward. The only thing it does is that it enables warnings for possible exposure. Interpreting those alerts is extremely difficult, as they do not give any information on the exposure situation (indoors, outdoors, masks on, etc.)

If the application tracked the exposures with all the available technical data (from whom, where, when, exposure time, signal strength), it would become relatively simple to calculate transmission probabilities in different situations. There could then be forward warnings in the transmission chain, and many now unknown transmission sources would become clear. There would also be immediate warnings of superspreading, which is an important mode of transmission in this epidemic.

Also, this data would give a lot of very valuable information on how the virus spreads in population. That information would help to plan the most effective countermeasures with the minimal side effects. Here we talk about billions in whatever currency unit you prefer.

So, an effective tracker would save lives and economies. With the tiny little downside that this level of tracking would throw privacy out of window.

(Edit: as a clarification, I am very much against this level of monitoring. But if you want to track the epidemic efficiently, you will have to be willing to sacrifice privacy. And this is why the Google/Apple API apps are very inefficient and offer little help to fight the epidemic. They are as good as they can be at the given level of privacy.)

Everybody who disagree with your point of view don’t understand one thing: the quicker we can end the pandemic the better. The entire 2020 Has been dragged out instead of just a few months. UK should’ve closed borders completely from when China has its own pandemic.
Sure, such “mass surveillance” has a very real chance to creep out into government overreach, but dead people can’t protest or voice their opinions right? What if all people who supports limiting government power got ill or killed because of covid, there would be no people to protest or to fight against government overreach. Basically, cut the short term losses for long term gain.

 

[rikscha]

No worse compared to most countries.

Well maybe Turkey is worse but that’s a big maybe

 

[gnasher729]

Block Apple from selling in the UK?! You are hilarious!

Suddenly shut down a huge element of economic stimulation and growth during the pandemic when recovery is severely needed. That seems like a grand idea. ?

The only semi-rational argument you make is all governments are corrupt. Just some more than others and Johnson's is particularly corrupt.

The only reason he removed the little snake Cummings was he utter arrogance and contempt:

Dominic Cummings accused of conflict of interest over NHS fund

Boris Johnson’s aide was consultant for AI startup that could win share of £250m fund

www.theguardian.com

Are the people behind the UK’s Coronavirus App friends or foes?

The London Economic - Palantir’s work in supporting the NHS in the development and implementation of the Coronavirus App is costing them in excess of £88,000 a week, yet they are charging just £1. - Opinion

www.thelondoneconomic.com

UK abandons contact-tracing app for Apple and Google model

NHS will switch to alternative design by tech giants, says Matt Hancock in latest embarrassing U-turn

www.theguardian.com

The fact he hasn't been criminally charged is beyond me.

Either way, I fully support Apple in their decision. They've not blocked the app. They have merely said the NHS cannot invade our privacy so find another way.

What makes the Cummings case even more disgusting: Cummings wasn't sent packing for his "arrogance and contempt", as you claim. He was sent packing because he fell out with one of Johnson's mistresses, the one who is living with and has his baby, and got a job in government making her powerful enough to get rid of Cummings. (Not his American pole dancer mistress who got nothing but £100,000 free money for her company on orders of Johnson. No, there is no proof that Johnson ordered it. But her application for the money was published, and if that application had come from anyone else it would have gone straight to the dustbin).

Well maybe Turkey is worse but that’s a big maybe

Do you mean Turkey or Egypt? Just asking because Boris Johnson proved that he doesn't know the difference, and that while he was foreign minister.

 

[gnasher729]

What mentality would that be? They’re trying to stop a pandemic and save lives. PS I don’t make comments for likes or dislikes, I say what I think.

They follow their instinct to collect data. Collecting data, to this government, comes far ahead of stopping a pandemic and saving lives.

 

[gnasher729]

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

Excuse me, but that "researcher" counted the traffic caused by Covid tracking. What you say is wrong in several ways: 1. The location of those iPhones is not tracked, only the fact that they are close to other iPhones. 2. MAC addresses of nearby devices are not recorded. What is recorded is a random ID identifying each phone which is changed every 15 minutes, making it impossible to detect which phone was nearby. 3. There is no geotagging. Only the fact that a phone was close to yours is recorded. 4. It doesn't send this data to Apple; it sends it to government health organisations. 5. There is a very easy way for the user to refuse consent or disable it: Take your iPhone, go into "Settings", and tap on "Exposure Notifications".

 

[gnasher729]

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?

ArtOfWarfare, I thought you were an iOS developer. You really, really should know better.

Latvia released an app based on the Apple/Google API in April 2020. Latvia, well-known hotspot of app development. At that point the API was available. The UK stopped developing their own app that they couldn't get working and started work on their new app, this time _based on the Apple/Google API_, in June 2020. Apple and Google took a few months. The UK government took ages. They could have taken the German app, which cost a tenth than what the UK paid. They could have advertised it. Nobody from the government has ever told people to use their app and why they should and why it would be safe.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Apple and Google have some simple rules for their API: You can only use it if you are a national health organisation (in the case of the USA each state counts, in the case of the UK there are four), so you and I can't put an app using it on the App Store. And if you use the API, you are not allowed to send location data to anyone.

It's up to the UK (or probably England in this case) to decide whether they want to use the API, which means no sending of location data to anyone, or not. Which means no API, and they still have to go through the normal app review process.

Right. Why is it so convoluted?

I had thought it was because Apple and Google cared about our privacy. But why wouldn’t they just release an actual app themselves, 13 months ago? With an actual competent app, none of the pandemic would have happened.

But read it side by side with a story about how Apple’s hardware sales have doubled in the last year. Apple and Google have no incentive to end the pandemic. They in fact have every incentive to make the pandemic last as long as possible.

Is the government incompetent? Maybe. But we’ve known Google is straight up evil for over a decade, and it sure seems like Apple has made some deals with the devil (see any story about Apple and Google cooperating) and might be just as evil.

 

[DanTSX]

COVID will only be a distant memory to you in under 2 years, all of the scientists (not politicians) tell us it will be with us for the foreseeable in one form or another.

I’d trade catching COVID-19 again just to live a few months like we used to live.

 

[1258186]

They follow their instinct to collect data. Collecting data, to this government, comes far ahead of stopping a pandemic and saving lives.

That is just ridiculous. The NHS App is voluntary. Nobody is forced to use it. You can’t track and trace if you no access to user locations.

 

[quarkysg]

I had thought it was because Apple and Google cared about our privacy. But why wouldn’t they just release an actual app themselves, 13 months ago? With an actual competent app, none of the pandemic would have happened.

You cannot prevent the spread of a disease with just an app. If we could, we wouldn't be in this state that we're in now.

Contact tracing is just one of the many tools health authorities uses to detect and contain the spread of a disease. The information provided by the Apple/Google APIs needs to be correlated with many other information to have a good picture of who has been to where and did what so as to predict who should be quarantine to prevent spread. It must also be supported by the community at large. No one single party can do anything effectively.

Apple/Google alone can't do anything useful if they wanted to (with the collected data.) and it is not their responsibility to do so. It is the healthcare authorities' job to ensure public safety with regards to disease control.

Apologies for going off-topic tho.

 

[Td1970]

This line of reasoning also got us the Patriot Act.

What’s wrong with the patriot act?

 

[fredrik9]

Excuse me, but that "researcher" counted the traffic caused by Covid tracking. What you say is wrong in several ways: 1. The location of those iPhones is not tracked, only the fact that they are close to other iPhones. 2. MAC addresses of nearby devices are not recorded. What is recorded is a random ID identifying each phone which is changed every 15 minutes, making it impossible to detect which phone was nearby. 3. There is no geotagging. Only the fact that a phone was close to yours is recorded. 4. It doesn't send this data to Apple; it sends it to government health organisations. 5. There is a very easy way for the user to refuse consent or disable it: Take your iPhone, go into "Settings", and tap on "Exposure Notifications".

I believe that you are wrong, and it is not me saying it, I am only referencing this research which found some disturbing facts. Listen to the podcast Security Now when they discuss this issue at the end of this episode. They explain it much better than me: https://overcast.fm/+LUuQnymGk