Contact Tracing App

[beorhthelm]

This with bells on. The decentralised model is the way forward, even the Germans have committed to a u-turn on the centralised model due to privacy concerns. Yet the UK are continuing with it.

as i understand it, the German change is based on turf, local healthcare groups not wanting to hand over to a centralised authority. we dont have that tension to deal with so can go ahead with the better clinical application. the French are pressing ahead with their centralised model too.

 

[sparkie]

For this AP to work it need mass public participation, you need trust from the public

Surely this alone suggests a decentralised platform would be better approach, and the problem is the Johnson / Cummins / Vote Leave machine has form when it comes to the use of personal data

Its a big problem for them

I suspect enough people will download it in the end.

Not many will be aware of ( or even care about ) Cummings' connection to it, nor of Vote Leave personnel involvement, nor anything about Cambridge Analytica history.

But some will make their own choice given the background info above.

 

[nicko31]

I suspect enough people will download it in the end.

Not many will be aware of ( or even care about ) Cummings' connection to it, nor of Vote Leave personnel involvement, nor anything about Cambridge Analytica history.

But some will make their own choice given the background info above.

I hope you are right...

 

[lost in london]

I'm not sure whether this is irony or not, so apologies is if it.

You know that GDPR has a number of exemptions. You can see all of them here; https://ico.org.uk/for-organisation...l-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/exemptions/

One of them is this I've highlighted the relevant sections;

Functions designed to protect the public

This exemption can apply if you process personal data for the purposes of discharging one of six functions designed to protect the public.

The first four functions must: be conferred on a person by enactment; be a function of the Crown, a Minister of the Crown or a government department; or be of a public nature and exercised in the public interest. These functions are:

to protect the public against financial loss due to the seriously improper conduct (or unfitness, or incompetence) of financial services providers, or in the management of bodies corporate, or due to the conduct of bankrupts;
to protect the public against seriously improper conduct (or unfitness, or incompetence);
to protect charities or community interest companies against misconduct or mismanagement in their administration, to protect the property of charities or community interest companies from loss or misapplication, or to recover the property of charities or community interest companies; or
to secure workers’ health, safety and welfare or to protect others against health and safety risks in connection with (or arising from) someone at work.
The fifth function must be conferred by enactment on: the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration; the Commissioner for Local Administration in England; the Health Service Commissioner for England; the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales; the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman; the Prison Ombudsman for Northern Ireland; or the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. This function is:

to protect the public from maladministration, or a failure in services provided by a public body, or from the failure to provide a service that it is a function of a public body to provide.
The sixth function must be conferred by enactment on the Competition and Markets Authority. This function is:

to protect members of the public from business conduct adversely affecting them, to regulate conduct (or agreements) preventing, restricting or distorting commercial competition, or to regulate undertakings abusing a dominant market position.

If you process personal data for any of the above functions, you are exempt from the GDPR’s provisions on:

the right to be informed;
all the other individual rights, except rights related to automated individual decision-making including profiling; and
all the principles, but only so far as they relate to the right to be informed and the other individual rights.

But the exemption only applies to the extent that complying with these provisions would be likely to prejudice the proper discharge of your functions. If you can comply with these provisions and discharge your functions as normal, you must do so.

Interesting, thanks. Didn't know that.

 

[Springal]

Do we get a £280M refund from Doms mates ?


https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce06576c

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

No collaboration, centralised, not even a cursory nod to gdpr rules, not open source, no explanation of the theory and technical approach...that's before you analyse the track record of the people behind it and the contract tendering

Apologies Mr Banana, but quoted you from the good news thread as didn't wish to derail it further. The open source thing is not true, I read earlier....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52579547

And on GDPR, that is a terrible piece of legislation in my view. Many times it has hamstrung my school from producing great videos, presentations etc. It is over-interpreted a bit like health and safety and needs re-drafting to loosen things up.

 

[Mr Banana]

Apologies Mr Banana, but quoted you from the good news thread as didn't wish to derail it further. The open source thing is not true, I read earlier....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52579547

And on GDPR, that is a terrible piece of legislation in my view. Many times it has hamstrung my school from producing great videos, presentations etc. It is over-interpreted a bit like health and safety and needs re-drafting to loosen things up.

Ah, thanks - I hadn't seen that. I know how annoying data protection stuff can be, too.

The app's not fit for purpose. I'd rather download Candy Crush and hope it would be beneficial.

 

[Perfidious Albion]

Interesting replies . I am with the “anything for the common good “ camp. I believe that the privacy concerns are overblown, given the amount of personal info already out there through normal internet use, and I don’t get the political arguments. That’s just my view.
My only concern is that a false report of symptoms may cause us to self isolate unnecessarily. Say Mrs Panicky does a single cough and presses the alert ... several people are going to be very inconvenienced.... but I suppose that is just something we have to accept.

 

[sparkie]

Do we get a £280M refund from Doms mates ?


https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce06576c

Hopefully Cummings' gang loses the contract, and we go with an alternative app that 'the science' in most other countries has chosen.

 

[highflyer]

I bow to nobody in my distain for this government and specifically for that sh*tstain on humanity, Dominic Cummings. I wish he had nothing to do with all this and think it is the height of stupidity to allow his name to get connected to the development of the app in any way shape or form as, quite rightly, a very high percentage of the UK population do not trust him and never will.

I have always been immensely concerned about the ease with which we give away our private information and how it gets misused. I have never been on facebook. I only ever switch on my tracker device on my phone in emergencies (I know how to use maps you see) and don't even use Strava because I don't like the idea of being tracked.

I will still download the app if it is shown to be effective.

Track and trace has been part of Korea's success. We need to get out of this and get a functioning economy back, without risking a major second wave, asap.

 

[highflyer]

Interesting replies . I am with the “anything for the common good “ camp. I believe that the privacy concerns are overblown, given the amount of personal info already out there through normal internet use, and I don’t get the political arguments. That’s just my view.
My only concern is that a false report of symptoms may cause us to self isolate unnecessarily. Say Mrs Panicky does a single cough and presses the alert ... several people are going to be very inconvenienced.... but I suppose that is just something we have to accept.

I'd assume people are only briefly inconvenienced, if at all, as Mrs Panicky would be tested and, if negative, everyone will be told to get on with their lives?

 

[WATFORD zero]

I think that we are absolutely desperate for a trace & trace system to help us out of this dreadful situation.It has been proven how effective the application in South Korea was in controlling their Covid outbreak and I definitely want one I can download is quick as possible to help.

So desperate that, instead of using one of the existing de-centralised systems, we award a contract to a small company, Faculty, to create a centralised application from scratch (and to add to the other 7 Government contracts that company has been awarded over the last 18 months).

A company that, purely coincidentally, is owned by the brother, Marc Warner, of a Political Advisor to the Government, Ben Walker.

The same Ben Walker who, purely coincidentally, was the one of the first two Political Advisors ever to sit in on a number of SAGE meetings in it's entire history of over 20 years.

Those two would be, purely coincidentally, Ben Walker and Dominic Cummings, who are not allowed to contribute to SAGE as they are not scientists, and not allowed to convey information from SAGE to ministers as they are Political Advisors and it would be against the rules governing political advisors.

That would be, purely coincidentally, the same Dominic Cummings who then decided it was within his remit to invite Marc Walker, owner of Faculty and brother of Ben, to a SAGE meeting.

And now, the Government have decided to start to look at some of the alternative existing de-centralised Track & Trace solutions instead, to overcome some of the issues with a centralised system ? https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce06576c

Well it's good to know that this has been well thought through and the solution has been very carefully chosen on purely technical and scientific grounds

 

[beorhthelm]

Well it's good to know that this has been well thought through and the solution has been very carefully chosen on purely technical and scientific grounds

the choice the NHS made for centralised system is on technical and scientific grounds. the alternative is been taken up because of undue focus on privacy and in part forced by Google/Apple unwilling to allow access to hardware. the Cummings link muddies the water of course but the main driver is NHS wants to be able to hold and analyse the data.

 

[WATFORD zero]

the choice the NHS made for centralised system is on technical and scientific grounds. the alternative is been taken up because of undue focus on privacy and in part forced by Google/Apple unwilling to allow access to hardware. the Cummings link muddies the water of course but the main driver is NHS wants to be able to hold and analyse the data.

If the NHS had already made a choice for a centralised system based on technical and scientific grounds (and, I have to say, I haven't seen this anywhere, so if you have any links to it ), I don't understand why they are now looking at de-centralised solutions. Why would such a basic requirement diametrically change

 

[beorhthelm]

useful discription of the tracking, comparing decnetralised and centralised.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/security-behind-nhs-contact-tracing-app

 

[beorhthelm]

If the NHS had already made a choice for a centralised system based on technical and scientific grounds (and, I have to say, I haven't seen this anywhere, so if you have any links to it ), I don't understand why they are now looking at de-centralised solutions. Why would such a basic requirement diametrically change

the challenge of getting the application to run in the background, so it doesnt interfere with use or eat battery. they thought they had found a way but seems this isnt hasnt worked as hoped, or the policitcal drivers are to prioritise uptake so bow to the objections of the centralised method.

 

[WATFORD zero]

the challenge of getting the application to run in the background, so it doesnt interfere with use or eat battery. they thought they had found a way but seems this isnt hasnt worked as hoped, or the policitcal drivers are to prioritise uptake so bow to the objections of the centralised method.

So, a problem with battery life means that they are having to re-examine the whole underlying concept of the centralised system that they have authorised the build of, whilst simultaneously rolling out volume testing of said system.

And this has made them re-examine the basic requirement 'the choice the NHS made for centralised system is on technical and scientific grounds' which incidentally, I'd still be interested to see a link to, in order to re-examine de-centralised solutions.

I think we can assume that both you and me understand the difference between centralised and de-centralised solution without reading someone's blog explaining it, thanks

 

[Billy the Fish]

If the NHS had already made a choice for a centralised system based on technical and scientific grounds (and, I have to say, I haven't seen this anywhere, so if you have any links to it ), I don't understand why they are now looking at de-centralised solutions. Why would such a basic requirement diametrically change

Why do you care how they do it?

I'm in IP Telephony, it's like Brian in the post room complaining to me about call encryption because he read an article about SIP.

You spent the whole Brexit thread claiming to be an expert in importing/exporting. I'll happily take that at face value but I'm struggling to believe you're also now an expert in mobile app building. Same as everyone else in this thread pretending to know what they're talking about.

The source code is out, why haven't you all spent the weekend analysing it?

The only knowledge anyone has demonstrated is how to regurgitate text from the article they just read, in some cases already proven wrong.

Given the importance I hope they do drop it and go with something else just to keep quiet all the keyboard warriors being bolshie just for the sake of it. The same people will then complain when the new app's release is delayed.

 

[WATFORD zero]

Why do you care how they do it?

I'm in IP Telephony, it's like Brian in the post room complaining to me about call encryption because he read an article about SIP.

You spent the whole Brexit thread claiming to be an expert in importing/exporting. I'll happily take that at face value but I'm struggling to believe you're also now an expert in mobile app building. Same as everyone else in this thread pretending to know what they're talking about.

The source code is out, why haven't you all spent the weekend analysing it?

The only knowledge anyone has demonstrated is how to regurgitate text from the article they just read, in some cases already proven wrong.

Given the importance I hope they do drop it and go with something else just to keep quiet all the keyboard warriors being bolshie just for the sake of it. The same people will then complain when the new app's release is delayed.

It started because I questioned why the NHS had contracted out the build to the brother of a Political Advisor rather than take an existing solution. beorhthelm replied that the reason was

the choice the NHS made for centralised system is on technical and scientific grounds. .

and that was why they didn't look at de-centralised solutions already in existence. However, they have now started looking at de-centralised solutions even though [MENTION=599]beorhthelm[/MENTION] had stated that they decided on a centralised solution at the outset on 'technical and scientific grounds'

I'm suggesting the issue is political, not technical.

I get it, you're a techie, but techie's can miss the point too

(PS. I am certainly no expert in Import/Export but when you run companies you have to have some knowledge in lots of areas. The companies I ran were software houses and I haven't read source code for many, many years )

 

[Billy the Fish]

It started because I questioned why the NHS had contracted out the build to the brother of a Political Advisor rather than take an existing solution. beorhthelm replied that the reason was
and that was why they didn't look at de-centralised solutions already in existence. However, they have now started looking at de-centralised solutions even though [MENTION=599]beorhthelm[/MENTION] had stated that they decided on a centralised solution at the outset on 'technical and scientific grounds'

I'm suggesting the issue is political, not technical.

I get it, you're a techie, but techie's can miss the point too

(PS. I am certainly no expert in Import/Export but when you run companies you have to have some knowledge in lots of areas. The companies I ran were software houses and I haven't read source code for many, many years )

Thanks for the fair and reasoned response, I totally respect that you've run companies and being software houses kind of joins the dots here!

I agree the issue is political, but the proof of wrongdoing will be technical. If they've released the source code of the app there really should be a smoking gun by now.
If anything the big issue here is the thing Tories are usually accused of - handing big contacts to their mates without a tendering process but everyone's forgotten about that to make Cummings the target.

With regards to functionality, that's what the current testing phase is for Shirley?