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From [1]: // TODO: We need a real device to test Bluetooth scanning if isMultipleAdvertisementSupported == false // TODO: We need analytics to identify number

From [1]: // TODO: We need a real device to test Bluetooth scanning if isMultipleAdvertisementSupported == false // TODO: We need analytics to identify number of devices that fall into this bucket I don't know whether to laugh or cry reading those comments, the fact that this is a "to do" whilst the app is in "testing" and the fact they've decided the appropriate procedure is to reinvent the work Google and Apple have already done. Google already published their code/APIs in [2]. I'm sure these considerations are taken care of by the framework the OS vendors have published themselves. It's absolute pure arrogance that anyone would even attempt to re-create the work that is being done at the OS level and not 'fall in line'. Germany back tracked, Australia back tracked, and the UK too, will back track and implement Google's APIs. In a time where the message is "saving lives", those TODOs are not living up to that motto. This app is a complete waste of time, resources and money. Use the official APIs and be done with it, anything else is putting people in harms way because you think you "know best". The UK government claimed they reached 100k tests, fudged the numbers, and haven't hit that target since. But it's okay, they'll hit 200k by the end of this month too! Pure 100% incompetence. [1]: https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-Android-BETA/blob/master/app/src/main/java/uk/nhs/nhsx/sonar/android/app/DeviceDetection.kt https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-Android-BETA/blob/maste... [2]: https://github.com/google/exposure-notifications-android https://github.com/google/exposure-notifications-android

ealexhudson 6y ago
This app is many things, but it does not reimplement the Google/Apple scheme, and works very differently. If you believe knowing contacts who tested positive is enough, the Google/Apple scheme is fine. If you need to know earlier and/risk assess based on exposure, only the NHSX approach works. It's not a clear cut Central v Not Central decision.
- dtf 6y ago
  I'd heard another interesting angle to this - that the Google/Apple notification scheme is decentralized, but users can only test C-19 positive via a central authority. Meanwhile the NHSX notification scheme is centralized, but users can self-identify as C-19 positive. Can anyone confirm this?
  - ealexhudson 6y ago
    That's exactly how it works. In the G/A world there's still a central list, but of people who volunteered a positive test. In the NHSX world, they capture broader data and can assess the network.
    - dtf 6y ago
      Interesting... could that mean the focus of the NHSX app is the central authorities "assessing the network" to develop epidemiological models, rather than providing a notification service to users that doesn't give out false positives? There's fear of people trolling this service by maliciously marking themselves positive, potentially forcing others to self-isolate repeatedly, perhaps without pay.
      - ealexhudson 6y ago
        Read the NCSC paper on the design. Malicious attacks by both trolls and APTs are considered and accounted for. It's an incredibly interesting design. I wouldn't say it's better/worse than Apple/Google, but it did have the advantage of not building policy into the design. If the A/G policy is wrong/not enough, the whole thing delivers little value.
      - g_p 6y ago
        You're right in your assessment of the risk of trolling etc. There is a model already in place, but it's worth noting that it's got quite an interesting design. In the "Google/Apple" decentralised approach, someone who is infected submits a list of their own historical identifiers, and this is broadcast to everyone to check against their own observation list. All you can really do is, on the client side, count up the number of occurrences of "infected" identifiers, and trip a client-side threshold for "after X contact instances, alert the user". You could get fancy and make X tweakable by the health service via that routine check-in for a new infected person list. This is basically calculating the risk to someone. The issue with this approach is that you have to create an public(ish) "infected" register. And even if it's not officially public, it takes 2 minutes to extract the API keys needed to fetch it, and a further 2 minutes to write and post a cron script to check the list into a git repo hourly. In the NHS approach, there's no big "infected list" you can look at, or publicise. If you spend time with someone, you can't get an identifier that will let you (forever more) determine if they test positive from the "infected list". This raises the privacy for someone who is infected. While some may think "well, I am not infected, they can lose privacy", the system only works if people feel willing to report symptoms or infection without repercussions. So privacy of the infected is important! Since the "upload" you make if infected or experiencing symptoms is of a list of other users you (the suspected infected person) saw, this makes it possible to look at the "risk from" aspect of infection - the hypothesis is that you can give advice to the potentially exposed users, based on their risk from you. And that can include how many infected people you were exposed to. When someone has symptoms and is told to isolate, some people they were in contact with might be told to as well. The NHS app approach will survey them regularly (daily?) about symptoms. This data is fed back in to determine, based on those you might have infected, whether you actually have the virus. When you have a meaningful sample, and none have symptoms after a certain date, this allows you to let people out of self-isolation sooner, at least in theory. The final point that is relevant is that the NHS believes it is essential to gather "self reports" for an app to work - if we assume an approx. 5 day mean/median incubation period, and if the research suggesting someone is most infective a day or two before symptoms is true, this means at the first sign of symptoms, you need to isolate someone and those they may have infected. Waiting for a test + result would mean you're potentially leaving people in the community, unaware, at their "most infectious" day or two. Clearly there's risks of "Sybil" attacks. But as per the NCSC paper, there's been quite a bit of thought put into this design. More than I think many realise.
- aboringusername 6y ago
  Yet, reading a recent report in [1]: "The NHS contact-tracing app must not be rolled out across the UK until the government has increased privacy and data protections, an influential parliamentary committee has said". The app requests location permission on Android, something that Google doesn't allow when using their implementation. I suspect this app, in this form, is DOA and will be quickly replaced. Even if they do somehow roll it out widely, there are concerns in [2] about its effectiveness working in the background. This app is a complete disaster, and will be unviable for the mass tracing they will want to conduct. They've pushed and pushed for "why" a centralized approach is the "right" one, made blog posts, issued justifications. Yet the app isn't likely to see mass adoption and isn't going to work due to restrictions within the OS. This app represents the disastrous approach the government took to this virus. Flip flopping around, shutting down way too late, no clear guidelines or approach, and a high death rate to solidify their failure. Then, they decide the official approach is "wrong" or "not good enough". Heads should roll over this. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-could-fall-foul-of-privacy-law-government-told https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus... [2]: https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-iOS-BETA/issues/2 https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-iOS-BETA/issues/2
  - ealexhudson 6y ago
    Location permission is a technical requirement for using Bluetooth in this way because of beacons. Lots of people keep saying the app can't work due to restrictions. Maybe, I'm not sure that has really been shown yet. A lot of the criticism doesn't really withstand the light of day.
    - aboringusername 6y ago
      The problem is, there's no way to disassociate the two flaws with this: 1: people see "government app wants your location" 2: the government possibly using that location access at a later time I don't want to accept location on a government app, and the UK has some history with facial recognition cameras and other privacy invasive laws. So there's no way for me to know this location is only for them to use BT LE and they won't make an API call to getLocation and uploadLocationToServer. I assume once you grant location permission even for BT LE purposes it can be (ab)used in some other way. They've made their own bed with their actions, public confidence might not trust an app like this with a permission like that.
dtf 6y ago
The FT reported yesterday [1], that NHSX had contracted Zuhlke Engineering to develop a “two week timeboxed technical spike” (deadline mid-May) to “investigate the complexity, performance and feasibility of implementing native Apple and Google contact tracing APIs within the existing proximity mobile application and platform”. [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce06576c https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce065...
BorisTheBrave 6y ago
> the official APIs and be done with it Ah, you mean the official API that hasn't been released yet, will take even longer to roll out, and won't be available on older models? Great idea. Not to mention the fact that Google's proposal works quite differently from NHSX's one. Google's appears to be slightly more privacy focused, which also gives it a smaller feature set, particularly around epidemic analysis and dealing with malicious entries. Maybe they will end up backtracking and just implement the Google APIs. Wouldn't be the end of the world if they did. But I would think that just illustrates the power Apple/Google have over their OSes, rather than the incompetence of the initial appraoch.
SyneRyder 6y ago
> ...Australia back tracked... They didn't, Australia's COVIDSafe app is already out and uses the same OpenTrace system as Singapore's TraceTogether app which it was derived from. Did you mean to type Austria instead? There are no kangaroos in Austria.

ealexhudson 6y ago

This app is many things, but it does not reimplement the Google/Apple scheme, and works very differently. If you believe knowing contacts who tested positive is enough, the Google/Apple scheme is fine. If you need to know earlier and/risk assess based on exposure, only the NHSX approach works. It's not a clear cut Central v Not Central decision.

dtf 6y ago
I'd heard another interesting angle to this - that the Google/Apple notification scheme is decentralized, but users can only test C-19 positive via a central authority. Meanwhile the NHSX notification scheme is centralized, but users can self-identify as C-19 positive. Can anyone confirm this?
- ealexhudson 6y ago
  That's exactly how it works. In the G/A world there's still a central list, but of people who volunteered a positive test. In the NHSX world, they capture broader data and can assess the network.
  - dtf 6y ago
    Interesting... could that mean the focus of the NHSX app is the central authorities "assessing the network" to develop epidemiological models, rather than providing a notification service to users that doesn't give out false positives? There's fear of people trolling this service by maliciously marking themselves positive, potentially forcing others to self-isolate repeatedly, perhaps without pay.
    - ealexhudson 6y ago
      Read the NCSC paper on the design. Malicious attacks by both trolls and APTs are considered and accounted for. It's an incredibly interesting design. I wouldn't say it's better/worse than Apple/Google, but it did have the advantage of not building policy into the design. If the A/G policy is wrong/not enough, the whole thing delivers little value.
    - g_p 6y ago
      You're right in your assessment of the risk of trolling etc. There is a model already in place, but it's worth noting that it's got quite an interesting design. In the "Google/Apple" decentralised approach, someone who is infected submits a list of their own historical identifiers, and this is broadcast to everyone to check against their own observation list. All you can really do is, on the client side, count up the number of occurrences of "infected" identifiers, and trip a client-side threshold for "after X contact instances, alert the user". You could get fancy and make X tweakable by the health service via that routine check-in for a new infected person list. This is basically calculating the risk to someone. The issue with this approach is that you have to create an public(ish) "infected" register. And even if it's not officially public, it takes 2 minutes to extract the API keys needed to fetch it, and a further 2 minutes to write and post a cron script to check the list into a git repo hourly. In the NHS approach, there's no big "infected list" you can look at, or publicise. If you spend time with someone, you can't get an identifier that will let you (forever more) determine if they test positive from the "infected list". This raises the privacy for someone who is infected. While some may think "well, I am not infected, they can lose privacy", the system only works if people feel willing to report symptoms or infection without repercussions. So privacy of the infected is important! Since the "upload" you make if infected or experiencing symptoms is of a list of other users you (the suspected infected person) saw, this makes it possible to look at the "risk from" aspect of infection - the hypothesis is that you can give advice to the potentially exposed users, based on their risk from you. And that can include how many infected people you were exposed to. When someone has symptoms and is told to isolate, some people they were in contact with might be told to as well. The NHS app approach will survey them regularly (daily?) about symptoms. This data is fed back in to determine, based on those you might have infected, whether you actually have the virus. When you have a meaningful sample, and none have symptoms after a certain date, this allows you to let people out of self-isolation sooner, at least in theory. The final point that is relevant is that the NHS believes it is essential to gather "self reports" for an app to work - if we assume an approx. 5 day mean/median incubation period, and if the research suggesting someone is most infective a day or two before symptoms is true, this means at the first sign of symptoms, you need to isolate someone and those they may have infected. Waiting for a test + result would mean you're potentially leaving people in the community, unaware, at their "most infectious" day or two. Clearly there's risks of "Sybil" attacks. But as per the NCSC paper, there's been quite a bit of thought put into this design. More than I think many realise.
aboringusername 6y ago
Yet, reading a recent report in [1]: "The NHS contact-tracing app must not be rolled out across the UK until the government has increased privacy and data protections, an influential parliamentary committee has said". The app requests location permission on Android, something that Google doesn't allow when using their implementation. I suspect this app, in this form, is DOA and will be quickly replaced. Even if they do somehow roll it out widely, there are concerns in [2] about its effectiveness working in the background. This app is a complete disaster, and will be unviable for the mass tracing they will want to conduct. They've pushed and pushed for "why" a centralized approach is the "right" one, made blog posts, issued justifications. Yet the app isn't likely to see mass adoption and isn't going to work due to restrictions within the OS. This app represents the disastrous approach the government took to this virus. Flip flopping around, shutting down way too late, no clear guidelines or approach, and a high death rate to solidify their failure. Then, they decide the official approach is "wrong" or "not good enough". Heads should roll over this. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-could-fall-foul-of-privacy-law-government-told https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus... [2]: https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-iOS-BETA/issues/2 https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-iOS-BETA/issues/2
- ealexhudson 6y ago
  Location permission is a technical requirement for using Bluetooth in this way because of beacons. Lots of people keep saying the app can't work due to restrictions. Maybe, I'm not sure that has really been shown yet. A lot of the criticism doesn't really withstand the light of day.
  - aboringusername 6y ago
    The problem is, there's no way to disassociate the two flaws with this: 1: people see "government app wants your location" 2: the government possibly using that location access at a later time I don't want to accept location on a government app, and the UK has some history with facial recognition cameras and other privacy invasive laws. So there's no way for me to know this location is only for them to use BT LE and they won't make an API call to getLocation and uploadLocationToServer. I assume once you grant location permission even for BT LE purposes it can be (ab)used in some other way. They've made their own bed with their actions, public confidence might not trust an app like this with a permission like that.

dtf 6y ago

The FT reported yesterday [1], that NHSX had contracted Zuhlke Engineering to develop a “two week timeboxed technical spike” (deadline mid-May) to “investigate the complexity, performance and feasibility of implementing native Apple and Google contact tracing APIs within the existing proximity mobile application and platform”. [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce06576c https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce065...

BorisTheBrave 6y ago

> the official APIs and be done with it Ah, you mean the official API that hasn't been released yet, will take even longer to roll out, and won't be available on older models? Great idea. Not to mention the fact that Google's proposal works quite differently from NHSX's one. Google's appears to be slightly more privacy focused, which also gives it a smaller feature set, particularly around epidemic analysis and dealing with malicious entries. Maybe they will end up backtracking and just implement the Google APIs. Wouldn't be the end of the world if they did. But I would think that just illustrates the power Apple/Google have over their OSes, rather than the incompetence of the initial appraoch.

SyneRyder 6y ago

> ...Australia back tracked... They didn't, Australia's COVIDSafe app is already out and uses the same OpenTrace system as Singapore's TraceTogether app which it was derived from. Did you mean to type Austria instead? There are no kangaroos in Austria.