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The biggest outbreaks of hypochondria unless they are going to require a verified test every time the app does its magic.Originally Posted by Croesy Blue
The app is toinform individuals if they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive. It is passive. when you test positive (if you have the app ) you inform the system and it then checks who you have been close to and warns then to self isolate and/or get tested.
Test - track - trace.
So how does that work if someone from France has been near you?
It's not to inform individuals based on individual infections, it's to track where there have been outbreaks so people in that area can be informed if they've been at risk.
Yes obviously you need to report your illness! I took that as a given, apologies.
"You can alert the centre" Well yes you can, you can do your French app and then do the British one ; or maybe you'll forget do everything you need to because you've quickly deteriorated and have been rushed to hospital. The point of it being automatic is that we are human. What if we don't know the small print and just assume we only need to do it once?
Working with other countries is so obviously sensible.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the point of it being automic" Which part of it do you assume is automatic for the person who tests positive? I understand it is automatic for the people it informs, but it still needs the manual input from the person tested or the testing station doesn't it?
It's also going to alert people who have been in contact with someone who is reporting symptoms. I have no idea what xsnaggle is on about with France apps and UK apps. He is one of two people on ignore, both intent on making any disagreements personal.
However, he is right, to an extent, in that if one app user reports they have symptoms and/or have tested positive, people who have had contact with the infected person will be alerted and advised on the next steps (I think this may depend on the amount of contact). What a quandary for him - if he disagrees with me, as per his default position, he will end up disagreeing with himself.
You are also right in that the app will track hotspots, I suspect the intention is that future lockdowns will be regionalised rather than national. The app has more than one objective.
If his point is about using different apps in different countries, then it becomes messy quickly. What happens when you return home from France, and then get sick? And what happens to the Spanish girl you were chatting up in Monaco, does her Spanish app alert her?
By automatic, I mean that you limit how much the user has to do because people make mistakes, misunderstand and so on.
Yes it needs input, so in this hypothetical scenario it makes more sense for the user to input once and have it shared than have to input more than once.
Wouldn't you be better off mapping confirmed cases rather than those 'reporting symptoms' for any regionalised lockdown? If so then we already have that facility via testing.
I am struggling to see why the app needs location data.
But when he goes to a different country the user will have to change his location info anyway. Its no good showing a UK postcode if you've been is spain for 10 days is it?
There is no great difficulty in this, we feed out info into things all the time. I sounds like some are trying to find reasosn to say the system won't work. Can't we see how it works first?
Yes, which requires an increase in testing - most likely at home. Possibly, in the near future, test results will be fairly quick (i.e. they won't need to be sent off). Thereby, reporting positive test results becomes the task of the infected person rather than the test centre.
Out of interest, would you be opposed to sharing the first 3/4 characters of your postcode - which is, I believe, the only location data being requested. The rest is done via bluetooth and could work with location gathering turned off (again, from my understanding of the app).
I've just got my first ever smart phone, although i do the same things on it as i did with my little brick. I don't think that i'll be bothering with this App, simply because i don't want to.
They are already admitting that future versions will likely include GPS for more precise location information. Of course right now their position is that they will fully inform users if updates include changes that are this important but the simple way to avoid having to find out is not download it in the first place.
Also loads of high level boffin shite that I am struggling to understand written from respected people in the field (ie not me and you) seems to suggest the whole thing is a really bad idea. This has put me right off.
Ultimately I dont think the app will work without verifying the information that users enter into it. There are enough nutcases ready and willing to enter bogus information and we will be wasting tests on people they wandered past. It sounds like it doesn't work in the background on iPhones anyway so it's dead in the water.
You have valid points, but my understanding is that you can't simply sign up with a bogus account. You have to enter the details of your doctor for one thing.
I am aware that some people are suggesting it is a bad idea - I suspect if you look solely for that your fears on the app will be confirmed. Similar fears are raised about things like Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, smart phones, and even traffic apps like Waze. I reckon many of the people calling this out as a bad idea are already anti-Government, and I reckon a high percentage of them use some of the other apps that have been proven to collect data (i.e. Facebook).
Do you have a link to the story about the app using GPS data in the future?
Phones and laptops already spy on you. The other day I was on my laptop loking at cats homes and for the last 3 days on my phone I have been getting adverts for cats cat charities and all the sundry things that go with them. It has been happeneing for ages. When I was working in Swansea I started getting local Swansea adverts and news.
They know where you are and what you do anyway. The app won't be any worse.
Are you signed up to Google? If so, your search history will go across any device that is signed into the same google account. I know this because a previous partner of mine was checking my Social Media account on my laptop whilst I was at work. I knew it because it was appearing in my Google internet history. Ex-partner admitted that they were looking into my social media accounts, and was promptly kicked out.
The idea of the app serving British people, sitting on a British server, owned by the NHS , with British security back up from GCHQ , should be good enough for most folk to realise its intention is too try and get our country back to work , the economy going ,confidence to move around , whilst trying to mitigate future spread of the virus witin British lives is surely the key here.
If we don't try something were doomed, as the financial crash will take more lives than this virus.
It was a statement attributed to the ceo of nhsx Matthew Gould, I don't have it to hand. Might have been on wired.co.uk.
I am not saying people will sign up with fake details, I am saying the app relies on a user initially accurately self-diagnosing. I used to work with someone who thought they had a brain tumor every time they got a headache. What will they do if they feel a bit hot, or wake up coughing in the morning, my guess is straight on the app to say they have symptoms and if you have been near them recently for any length of time you are getting an alert saying that you may have been exposed and so on and so on... Tracing should be done after diagnosis, the effort should be placed on speeding up testing so that this can take place quickly and effectively.
Three separate issues for me I suppose.
1) I don't think the app will achieve what they hope it will, even if enough people decide to use it. The iPhone issues are not a good start.
2) Very real issues around privacy highlighted by legal and tech experts.
3) mixed messages around whether the data gets deleted once it is over, no plans to publish the code for expert scrutiny and scope creep - already we are hearing that the app might become more than just a contact tracer straight from the horses mouth.
And you are right, none of us are pure in terms of the data we have often unwittingly given away however you are wrong to highlight this in any way hypocritical because this isn't a discussion about whether or not you agree with the government or an organisation knowing things about us, this is a discussion about where you draw the line. If they said we can save you from heart attacks, you just need to put CCTV in your shower and let us watch, presumably you wouldn't think that was a measured and appropriate response to the risk of dropping dead from a heart attack.
We simply draw the line at different points.
Also I don't think it is valid for people to be continually reaching for the tired old 'if X were the government you would agree with it' because there is strong evidence to the contrary. When people strongly disagree with something they often do so regardless of political allegiance (the Iraq war being a pretty significant example that springs to mind). This government exists under a particularly dark cloud of skepticism in my mind simply because they find dishonesty so easy.
I'm willing to ignore all the issues highlighted as long as there is a picture of the queen drinking tea with the British flag wrapped around her on the home screen on the app. That will prove everything is okay.
I will reluctantly download the app. There are a number of people on here, several of whom you seem to venerate, who are really sceptical that giving the state any kind of personal information attacks their liberties and will be used to track down those spirited free thinkers.
There are also loads of people who are distrustful of this government's relationship with the management and manipulation of people's personal information and how that is stored and used. The Brexit campaign mastered this using organisations like Cambridge Analytica with a key architect being Dominic Cummings. He is now at the core of government, and regardless of the facts about the app, people don't trust it when he and his ilk is sniffing around it.
To succeed the app needs trust. It's sad that at a time of national crisis that trust is unlikely to be there either because people are so alienated from the state that they buy into conspiracy theories by the dozen or the people in government have lost the trust of moderate people because of previous perceived sins.
Also in this article you do wonder whether the UK going its own way is a political choice where the common apple/google systems that best trace across borders are discounted because they don't fit with an independent Britain. Back to feet and inches and away from metres!
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/05/nh...app-explained/
On point 1, you may be correct. I'm willing to contribute, though, in the hope that the data I provide can help avoid a second wave or further periods of lock down (I suspect a second period of lockdown before Christmas will see me unemployed, but I am not using that as a reason for contributing)
On Point 2, there are issues about privacy on many apps. However, the GDPR rules have made a significant change in the app landscape and protecting personal data (shame this forum doesn't follow the rules though).
On Point 3, I would like to see links to that claim.
With regards to putting a camera in the shower to stop me having a heart-attack. That is not a great analogy, to be fair. This app is designed to stop the spread of a contagious viral infection. So, the data gathering is, I think, commensurate to the task in hand. If the app wanted a photo of my willy, or wanted to know what newspapers I read, or what political party I voted for in the last election - then I would either provide false data, or no data at all.
I appreciate that people draw the line at different points, but I wonder how many people who are crying "privacy is important" are sharing lots of data with faceless organisations that result in targeted political messages being sent their way, and changing the course of democracy as we know it? I am not saying it is hypocritical to share data with one organisation, and to refuse to share data with this app - what I am saying is that refusal has to be based on more than "it's big brother innit" type reactions.
The app doesn't collect any personal or identifying data.
Each person is assigned a random and unique number.
If you have come into contact with a fellow app user, and that contact exceeds 15 minutes, and the contact is 2m or less, that is recorded on each app user's device
If one of the people becomes ill, (initially self diagnosed, eventually via a test) then each app user that the sick person has encountered will be contacted to inform them of the situation, and advising them to self-isolate for 2 days.
The sick person is then offered a test. If they test positive, then each of the contacts are told to self isolate for 14 days. If negative, the contacts are told that the notification was false.
If the sick person refuses the test, then the next stage is that if a sufficient number of the people who encountered the sick person develop symptoms then all contacts are advised to self isolate.
Encounters are removed after 28 days unless a person becomes sick.
Which part of that is causing concern?
Great post, sums up how I feel better than I could have
I have already told you what causes me concern. In reference to your timeline above, the government are going to have to significantly improve their testing to meet a 2 day turnaround.
But more fundamentally, you have no idea if any of what you have written above is true until the code is released and independently verified. Does blindly trusting a government who has demonstrably lied and manipulated their way through this crisis not bother you?
On your laboured point around people who object to this but share with other organisations. To put it bluntly, it is becoming clearer and clearer in this thread that there will be a social stigma attached to choosing to not download the app. For that reason you can't compare it to someone willingly sharing their information. No one has questioned your choice to download it, the pressure is in one direction only. It is likely that those who decide not to download it but struggle to translate their concerns into words will be harangued and harassed into doing as they are supposed to.
I am surprised I need to explain this but the camera in the bathroom example wasn't meant to be an analogy but instead a demonstration of the fact that there is a spectrum of opinions and therefore personal decisions made around this app, your line will be different to mine. A really crazy person might even think a camera in the bathroom is appropriate.
I have tried to find as many independent experts in the field and take my lead from them, the overwhelming sense I get is that there are major and wide ranging concerns spanning multiple specialisms.
Found this enlightening from a ncsc/gchq perspective - https://twitter.com/martinralbrecht/...794294784?s=20. You might think he is crazy to imply that we might wish to join those dots.
Interestingly, according to the FT, nhsx are already investigating into whether they could and should switch to the system being used by the majority of countries. One which appears to have the green light from a lot of the experts criticising our chosen approach.
Your camera in the bathroom line was an analogy, what else could it possibly be?
I have outlined the data that the app collects. Which elements of that data could possibly identify you? This isn't really about social stigma, it is about trying to find out if the reasons people are giving for not downloading the app are valid or vacuous. At the moment, the anti-appers arguments are flimsy. "It won't get enough downloads, so I am not downloading it". Yeah, good one. "It collects all your data" - no it doesn't.
You're asking for code to be produced, but wouldn't the release of such code open the app up to attacks?
I completely agree with you about my levels of distrust of this Government. I wouldn't trust them as far as I can throw them - but this app is produced independently of the Government, and the app doesn't request data that should make us feel uncomfortable. It is not akin to having a camera in your shower.
NHSx has released other elements of their codebase and the world is full of open source software so the answer is no. More eyes on the code is probably likely to have the opposite effect especially (as detailed in the link above) gchq, who have been involved in the production of the app, have a policy of not highlighting vulnerabilities and instead using them to their own advantages.
Are the joint committee on human rights concerns vacuous or valid?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...03321.html?amp
As I have said before, I will willingly download the app and am not worried about the loss of privacy angle. I will do it in the belief that, by doing so, it will assist the country in the control of the virus and speed up us coming out of lockdown and help reduce new cases and deaths. It is a personal choice for everyone, to either download it or not but for those that are considering not doing it just reflect on the fact that, in not participating, you are increasing the chance that you will come into contact with someone who has the disease without you knowing it and thereby catch it yourself or possibly that you could give the disease to someone else who then may become seriously ill or die. If you are prepared to accept the consequences of that just because of some perceived possible loss of privacy then fine, carry on. Cue messages from ETHB, Heisingberg et al calling me a knob, tool, Warnock lover, blind Tory etc etc.
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