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The government had already basically eaten the bad press on the privacy aspects of their design vs the Google/Apple API... I wonder what prompted this. I know

The government had already basically eaten the bad press on the privacy aspects of their design vs the Google/Apple API... I wonder what prompted this. I know that the app used a kind of hack to allow for Bluetooth during sleep (something missing from the Aus app) - maybe they were told that was going to be patched out? I really think this must be related to it not working as intended rather than anything political.

angrygoat 6y ago
Yes - the Australian app has all sorts of hacky workarounds, at least on iOS, such as notifications once or twice a day which ask you to foreground the app and 'make sure it is running'. Hopefully we will get an update here to use the new APIs.
mrkwse 6y ago
The health minister overseeing it suggested it could be delayed until winter yesterday citing both concerns about public response to the method (which sounds like a bit of a vacant excuse) and unspecified 'technical challenges'.[1] I'd speculate that this is a case of the original technique not being a success on the Isle of Wight tests and a change of approach to lean on the device/OS manufacturers rather than try and work around them. [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-uk-nhs-a9571461.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-c...
- Theodores 6y ago
  There is a certain stillborn quality to the app. I don't think the Isle of Wight has much to do with it. They got VMWare/Pivotal to write an app people could install on their phones and that was never updated. The NHSX GitHub repo of the code exists but there is little activity. A few updates to URLs in the documents is as far as it goes. A crypto coin project from a few years ago has a similar feel to the code. Nothing is going on. The symptoms were changed over the last few weeks to officially accept that loss of taste/smell was a defining characteristic. The app could have been updated to include this updated self diagnosis information. That would have at least indicated progress. But not even these basic updates have happened. Pull requests are few and far between. The ones that exist are not dealt with. Again, a sign of a project far from active. With software we all know that you can do stuff client or server side to a certain extent. We don't know how much of the server side of this app is built. I suspect they put a minimum effort app together just because. There is no evidence of it hooking up to call centres and contact tracing. The people in the call centres are allegedly idle. The public mood has changed and people are using their common sense rather than following government guidance to the letter. The opportunity for everyone to be running this app has gone. Only a change such as a requirement to have the app if using public transport or entering shops can make it an app people want to use.
g_p 6y ago
The UK "hack" for the bluetooth was quite clever from what I saw - in essence they implemented the "background discovery of an iPhone" feature. One concern I do have with this approach is that the decentralised system inherently can only model the "risk-to" an individual from an epidemiological perspective. It can't model the "risk-from" side of things. To avoid Sybil type attacks, you need to use centrally issued (and thus verifiable) test results to notify others. Unless tests are administered very promptly, with results immediately available, it seems difficult to make this work in the decentralised approach - with a mean and median "time to symptoms" of around 5.1 days [1], and someone at their most infectious for the 1 to 2 days prior to experiencing symptoms, it seems decentralised apps will struggle. If A is infected on day 0, then on day 3 they may infect B and C. On day 5, A experiences symptoms, goes online, and requests a test, saying they have symptoms. They realistically would get a test the following day. and the result the day after that. That would be day 7, and at that point, B and C might be notified by the app. The issue is that B and C are now on day 4 of their own infections, the second day of their most infectious period, walking around unaware. They find out the day before they would themselves (on average) experience symptoms. Clearly the virus is not as deterministic in behaviour as in this simple model, but the above seems to suggest to me that to get any real value out of this (i.e. preventing the next generation of infection), you need to either be able to respond to symptoms reports, or significantly expedite the testing process. In the above situation, a same-day test-and-result would enable B and C to be notified on day 2 or early on day 3 of their own infection, potentially having some real impact. But to achieve this, the latency of testing would need to drop hugely. [1] https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period...
- ppf 6y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking - I don't see how this approach will work in practice with the time it takes to find and positively identify a Covid-19 case, as the chain of contacts will become enormous.
  - g_p 6y ago
    If the clinical results of the 20-minute lab-free test the UK is trialling [1] are positive, I could see this working. But that's a risk. To my mind, this is a simple matter of reducing the time the "next generation" of infected people are in the community before being notified. If that can be below 3 days, I think the disease can be managed based on the law of averages. If not, it seems it will continue to spread. That's why, absent a national "Amazon Prime Now" style <= 2 hour delivery window for tests (and some way to verify the results of these tests for input to a decentralised app), I don't see this working. The app will only really be needed/helpful in cases where you don't know people you are in close or prolonged proximity to, i.e. shops and public transport. In these cases, it makes sense to notify as early as possible, even at the risk of some false positives for those not actually infected, but who were close. The question is how many FPs there will be, but this also happens with human-based contact tracing too. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/uk-coronavirus-test-with-20-minute-wait-being-trialled https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/uk-coronavirus...

angrygoat 6y ago

Yes - the Australian app has all sorts of hacky workarounds, at least on iOS, such as notifications once or twice a day which ask you to foreground the app and 'make sure it is running'. Hopefully we will get an update here to use the new APIs.

mrkwse 6y ago

The health minister overseeing it suggested it could be delayed until winter yesterday citing both concerns about public response to the method (which sounds like a bit of a vacant excuse) and unspecified 'technical challenges'.[1] I'd speculate that this is a case of the original technique not being a success on the Isle of Wight tests and a change of approach to lean on the device/OS manufacturers rather than try and work around them. [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-uk-nhs-a9571461.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-c...

Theodores 6y ago
There is a certain stillborn quality to the app. I don't think the Isle of Wight has much to do with it. They got VMWare/Pivotal to write an app people could install on their phones and that was never updated. The NHSX GitHub repo of the code exists but there is little activity. A few updates to URLs in the documents is as far as it goes. A crypto coin project from a few years ago has a similar feel to the code. Nothing is going on. The symptoms were changed over the last few weeks to officially accept that loss of taste/smell was a defining characteristic. The app could have been updated to include this updated self diagnosis information. That would have at least indicated progress. But not even these basic updates have happened. Pull requests are few and far between. The ones that exist are not dealt with. Again, a sign of a project far from active. With software we all know that you can do stuff client or server side to a certain extent. We don't know how much of the server side of this app is built. I suspect they put a minimum effort app together just because. There is no evidence of it hooking up to call centres and contact tracing. The people in the call centres are allegedly idle. The public mood has changed and people are using their common sense rather than following government guidance to the letter. The opportunity for everyone to be running this app has gone. Only a change such as a requirement to have the app if using public transport or entering shops can make it an app people want to use.

g_p 6y ago

The UK "hack" for the bluetooth was quite clever from what I saw - in essence they implemented the "background discovery of an iPhone" feature. One concern I do have with this approach is that the decentralised system inherently can only model the "risk-to" an individual from an epidemiological perspective. It can't model the "risk-from" side of things. To avoid Sybil type attacks, you need to use centrally issued (and thus verifiable) test results to notify others. Unless tests are administered very promptly, with results immediately available, it seems difficult to make this work in the decentralised approach - with a mean and median "time to symptoms" of around 5.1 days [1], and someone at their most infectious for the 1 to 2 days prior to experiencing symptoms, it seems decentralised apps will struggle. If A is infected on day 0, then on day 3 they may infect B and C. On day 5, A experiences symptoms, goes online, and requests a test, saying they have symptoms. They realistically would get a test the following day. and the result the day after that. That would be day 7, and at that point, B and C might be notified by the app. The issue is that B and C are now on day 4 of their own infections, the second day of their most infectious period, walking around unaware. They find out the day before they would themselves (on average) experience symptoms. Clearly the virus is not as deterministic in behaviour as in this simple model, but the above seems to suggest to me that to get any real value out of this (i.e. preventing the next generation of infection), you need to either be able to respond to symptoms reports, or significantly expedite the testing process. In the above situation, a same-day test-and-result would enable B and C to be notified on day 2 or early on day 3 of their own infection, potentially having some real impact. But to achieve this, the latency of testing would need to drop hugely. [1] https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period...

ppf 6y ago
Exactly what I was thinking - I don't see how this approach will work in practice with the time it takes to find and positively identify a Covid-19 case, as the chain of contacts will become enormous.
- g_p 6y ago
  If the clinical results of the 20-minute lab-free test the UK is trialling [1] are positive, I could see this working. But that's a risk. To my mind, this is a simple matter of reducing the time the "next generation" of infected people are in the community before being notified. If that can be below 3 days, I think the disease can be managed based on the law of averages. If not, it seems it will continue to spread. That's why, absent a national "Amazon Prime Now" style <= 2 hour delivery window for tests (and some way to verify the results of these tests for input to a decentralised app), I don't see this working. The app will only really be needed/helpful in cases where you don't know people you are in close or prolonged proximity to, i.e. shops and public transport. In these cases, it makes sense to notify as early as possible, even at the risk of some false positives for those not actually infected, but who were close. The question is how many FPs there will be, but this also happens with human-based contact tracing too. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/uk-coronavirus-test-with-20-minute-wait-being-trialled https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/uk-coronavirus...