Apple and Google in 'Standoff' With UK Health Service Over COVID-19 Contact Tracing App

[Seanm87]

So many 'contributors' spouting off here, all opinionated and fully dependant on which side of the bed they got out this morning.
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Based on what, if any, evidence?
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Based on what, if any, evidence?

Evidence?

Come on you don't need evidence to know that the manufacturers of 99% of every smartphone OS with trillions of dollars wealth between them, 2 of the biggest tech companies in history, will make something better than the NHS which barely has enough to get by on a day to day basis? and of which isn't a tech company.

 

[gnasher729]

So they built an app that had zero chance of being approved, with always-on BT access a la Tile, and now that Apple announced a framework to actually make it possible, they are... complaining?

No, it didn't have zero chances of being approved.

We are having an extraordinary situation where App Store rules could be modified in very short time if needed.
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NHS need to give up on this crappy app. It will be nowhere near good enough compared to what apple and google are doing.

Sean, I'm surprised how you can judge an app without ever having seen it. And knowing just a little bit about software development, I can tell you it will be exactly as good as what Apple and Google are doing. And everyone here doing software development will be able to tell you why.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

The UK government promised in mid-March to rapidly increase the number of tests being carried out - sounds good doesn't it - but when you look at the actual promise, they said they wanted to achieve 25,000 tests per day by mid-April.

Well, mid-April was a few days ago and they haven't achieved 25,000 tests per day on ANY day yet. Yesterday they managed 21,328.

Meanwhile Germany is conducting well over 50,000 tests per day, and at points has managed over 100,000 tests per day. source

The UK government initially claimed in early March that rather than attempt to contain the virus, they would adopt a herd immunity strategy. This was completely at odds from advice from the World Health Organisation which stated that containment and testing were absolutely vital. A week later, the UK government discovered that their strategy was utterly flawed, because the science it was based on was using infection rates that were much lower; at which point the UK government did implement containment measures. Even so, we were one of the last countries in Europe to lock down, and even then it's been done in a half-hearted way, i.e. "Stay home! But remember to go out to work! And for exercise!".

Your experience may be different if you are in Scotland, as per your profile. I have relatives in Scotland who believe, as it seems you do, that things are being handled well. From the perspective of a southerner, I could not disagree more.
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My brother experienced the same thing. He was extremely unwell for over a fortnight, with all the symptoms. The NHS website and phone line offered nothing, except advising him to stay home. No testing, no contact tracing, nothing.

Meanwhile, our niece in Ireland asked for a test, this was mailed to her, and she got the results in 72 hours.

The UK is doing appallingly, by comparison to other countries in Europe. With perhaps the exception of Sweden.

The government are doing what they can. I agree that they've failed to meet their targets, but it's not through a lack of trying - it's in everyone's interest to try, why wouldn't they?

Please remember that contrary to the belief of a lot of folks, the people who run the country aren't idiots, and will be making decisions based on the information fed to them through numerous channels. Boris won't just pluck something out the air and say "let's go with that" - everything will have been calculated, vetted and then presented with options. It just so happens that the strategy they came up with wasn't the best one, and they admitted it by changing strategy. The situation is unprecedented, there isn't a playbook for it.

I agree that we should have locked down sooner, and I also agree that the current measures need to be hardened. Problem is though, us Brits are a stubborn bunch, and if we had locked down sooner, people probably wouldn't have taken it as seriously as they are now (still plenty of room for improvement though).

The nurses interviewed by the BBC weren't based in Scotland, and one of my friends that I spoke to was in Birmingham.

 

[gnasher729]

NHS need to give up on this crappy app. It will be nowhere near good enough compared to what apple and google are doing.

Sean, I'm surprised how you can judge an app without ever having seen it. And knowing just a little bit about software development, I can tell you it will be exactly as good as what Apple and Google are doing. And everyone here doing software development will be able to tell you why.

Come on you don't need evidence to know that the manufacturers of 99% of every smartphone OS with trillions of dollars wealth between them, 2 of the biggest tech companies in history, will make something better than the NHS which barely has enough to get by on a day to day basis? and of which isn't a tech company.

Sean, you are not thinking. And you haven't read Apple's press releases. Or both. There is a big, big, big point that you are missing.

Apple and Google are just making an API aren't they? Not an app.

Congratulations. Here's the point that Sean is missing.

 

[jimbobb24]

All these people late to the party. German random antibody sampling suggests exposure must greater than anticipated and infection rate much higher than thought. Curves already all bending. By the time this stuff is ready we should be all back to work in masks and gloves. Hopefully these measures can be ready for the next time China has a virus.

 

[and 1989 others]

Evidence?

I work front line, you only get a test in the UK if you have symptoms and are being admitted to a Hospital, OR you are a key worker with symptoms or somebody in your households symptoms, and is purely so they can get you back to work quickly. There is no wide spread testing.

 

[indiekiduk]

Other ways the NHS could work around this problem or at least gain some leverage is by giving everyone a BLE keyring (expensive) or make a jailbreak app (controversial).

The BLE keyring would be much more acceptable by the public because after the pandemic is over they can throw it away and no longer be tracked. Apple's system might have them tracked forever. The problem is since Apple own the Ecosystem they can just ban the BLE keyring's companion app from the store for breaking whatever rule they choose.

Personally I think they should abandon this whole idea as Bluetooth is too error prone for this, which they will probably realise after the trial.

 

[femike]

"Apple and Google announced on Friday that they are working together on Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus around the world. "
Google and Apple are to love this to be implemented. Wow, what an amazing opportunity to get detailed tracking data signed off by governments. If any of you think that this will be totally disabled after the virus is gone you are very naive. There will be mission creep, there no doubt about it. Google is probably loving this at the moment, and they are certainly taking advantage of it.

 

[chucker23n1]

Not this ^^^.

We're talking about The Guardian, not some ****y tabloid.

Sure, but tabloid or not, mainstream journalism is notoriously bad at tech. The Guardian article seems to make no mention whatsoever of the App Store's or Play Store's guidelines.
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Other ways the NHS could work around this problem or at least gain some leverage is by giving everyone a BLE keyring (expensive) or make a jailbreak app (controversial).

A BLE keyring doesn't change anything about the guidelines for iOS apps when using Bluetooth.

A jailbreak app may be controversial, but more importantly it's useless. There are so few people who with a jailbroken phone, and even far fewer than that with this particular app, that it wouldn't meaningfully work.

The BLE keyring would be much more acceptable by the public because after the pandemic is over they can throw it away and no longer be tracked. Apple's system might have them tracked forever.

Apple's system only stores data on the device itself, though.

The problem is since Apple own the Ecosystem they can just ban the BLE keyring's companion app from the store for breaking whatever rule they choose.

Yes.

Personally I think they should abandon this whole idea as Bluetooth is too error prone for this, which they will probably realise after the trial.

I don't see how it's error-prone. It's just a breeding ground for privacy abuses, so Apple restricts it.

 

[mazz0]

Please do elaborate on what you mean by "one of those"?

I'll be very confident in saying that Apple will forbid such apps under normal circumstances. However, as we're not under normal circumstances, I'll bet that they'll figure out something together.

Additionally, regarding your comment "if you think their facts are incorrect" - please tell me where these facts are stated? If you look at the article from The Guardian, you'll see no named (or unnamed) sources at all. In fact, the article (in contradiction to its headline) says "a spokesperson for NHSX – the the health service’s digital transformation arm – denied claims of a “standoff”" - so who do you believe?

I don't have any facts at all, I'm just basing it on the probability that The Guardian is telling porkies again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Facts claimed in the article:

• "the policies, unveiled last week, apply only to apps that don’t result in the creation of a centralised database of contacts."
• "a public health authority cannot ask a phone to gather a list of every other phone it has been in contact with."
• Instead, it can only perform a much more limited version of contact tracing, which involves sending every phone in the system a list of other phones that have been reported as contagious, and asking them, in effect, “have you seen this phone?” said [Dr Michael] Veale [a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at UCL].
• The limits will prevent the NHS from obtaining useful information about population flows in the aggregate, tracking “near misses” or receiving information about contacts from people who have opted into the system but not recently checked their phones.

That last one I think could be considered more an inference than a fact.

The article also presents a different perspective, that of NHSX which you quote, yet you seem to think doing this is a bad thing?

So which of the above facts are wrong?
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Sure, but tabloid or not, mainstream journalism is notoriously bad at tech. The Guardian article seems to make no mention whatsoever of the App Store's or Play Store's guidelines.

Oh I agree with that. The Guardian's tech coverage is lightweight at best.

 

[mike...]

The UK government promised in mid-March to rapidly increase the number of tests being carried out - sounds good doesn't it - but when you look at the actual promise, they said they wanted to achieve 25,000 tests per day by mid-April.

Well, mid-April was a few days ago and they haven't achieved 25,000 tests per day on ANY day yet. Yesterday they managed 21,328.

Tests carried out per day is not the same as capacity. We now have the capacity to carry out over 35,000 tests per day and that's rising all the time.

The government are delivering what the majority of the electorate voted for. I didn't vote for it, but we all need to move on, because democracy.

The government only have a majority because of a broken FPTP system. They don't actually represent the majority.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

Facts claimed in the article:

• "the policies, unveiled last week, apply only to apps that don’t result in the creation of a centralised database of contacts."
• "a public health authority cannot ask a phone to gather a list of every other phone it has been in contact with."
• Instead, it can only perform a much more limited version of contact tracing, which involves sending every phone in the system a list of other phones that have been reported as contagious, and asking them, in effect, “have you seen this phone?” said [Dr Michael] Veale [a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at UCL].
• The limits will prevent the NHS from obtaining useful information about population flows in the aggregate, tracking “near misses” or receiving information about contacts from people who have opted into the system but not recently checked their phones.

That last one I think could be considered more an inference than a fact.

The article also presents a different perspective, that of NHSX which you quote, yet you seem to think doing this is a bad thing?

So which of the above facts are wrong?

Those are not facts, they're statements. The whole article is an inference.

An NHSX spokesperson denies there was any standoff... the article headline says there's a standoff. Spokesperson says there isn't. That's all folks!

 

[chucker23n1]

Facts claimed in the article:

• "the policies, unveiled last week, apply only to apps that don’t result in the creation of a centralised database of contacts."

This seems to mix up a few things.

The policies that restrict Bluetooth aren't new. The policies regarding COVID-19 apps aren't from last week. And the framework from lats week isn't about policies.

And it's not a big shock that Apple doesn't want apps to create a centralized database containing health information, potentially intertwined with location data.

• "a public health authority cannot ask a phone to gather a list of every other phone it has been in contact with."
• Instead, it can only perform a much more limited version of contact tracing, which involves sending every phone in the system a list of other phones that have been reported as contagious, and asking them, in effect, “have you seen this phone?” said [Dr Michael] Veale [a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at UCL].

So, here's the thing: we don't know how much Dr. Veale simplified or knows. We don't know how much the journalist simplified or knows. But the end result is: either this is misleading writing, or the app the NHS wrote uses very naïve approaches from a privacy and security point of view. Asking a phone if it has seen another phone is exactly the kind of nightmare surveillance privacy disaster that Apple/Google's approach prevents: their approach doesn't let you go back to identifying the phone at all.

Because once you can identify a phone, what does that mean? You can probably also identify the phone's owner. You also probably have a timestamp. You might also have location data. Tied to a timestamp. And a person. For multiple phones. In a centralized database. Sounds highly problematic — and unnecessary, as Apple/Google's approach shows. Theirs is much harder to build, but it can be done.

I'm not saying the NHS wants to abuse this data. But can they keep it? Will someone else request it? Will it leak?

• The limits will prevent the NHS from obtaining useful information about population flows in the aggregate, tracking “near misses” or receiving information about contacts from people who have opted into the system but not recently checked their phones.

That could be true. But "population flows in the aggregate" is also really, really close to a nightmare scenario.

 

[CarpalMac]

Those are not facts, they're statements. The whole article is an inference.

An NHSX spokesperson denies there was any standoff... the article headline says there's a standoff. Spokesperson says there isn't. That's all folks!

But, but it doesn’t fit with the keyboard critics narrative.

 

[mazz0]

Those are not facts, they're statements. The whole article is an inference.

Facts are expressed in statements; "those are not facts, they're statements" makes no sense at all. Come to think of it, an inference can be a fact too: if you tell me you can touch the ceiling of your flat without standing on a chair I might infer that you're over five feet tall. This is an inference, and also a fact that is right or wrong. So given you're certain the Guardian have those facts wrong, it would be far more constructive if you were to tell us where they were wrong, and what the truth was.

An NHSX spokesperson denies there was any standoff... the article headline says there's a standoff. Spokesperson says there isn't. That's all folks!

Are you trolling? That's unbelievably facile if not. You seem to be suggesting that a good news source is one where only a single narrative is explored, where only voices in agreement are presented. That's not a healthy attitude.

I'm not sticking up for the headline by the way, it's sensationalist clickbait and I kinda wish they wouldn't do it (though if not doing it meant going bust and not having any articles then I'll accept it as a necessary evil). The content of the article should be the basis of the criticism though.
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But the end result is: either this is misleading writing, or the app the NHS wrote uses very naïve approaches from a privacy and security point of view.

Bit of both is my guess.

 

[DblHelix]

That's because without adhering to the Apple and Google API, a contact tracing app won't be able to access Bluetooth when it's running in the background, and would only work when the app was open and the phone unlocked.

This is why government shouldn't be building stuff. They are grossly unaware of limitations or security holes they create in things because they build an app often once a decade and make only small updates after it is built and timelines are often more than a year not 3-6 months like they are trying to operate now.

 

[chucker23n1]

This is why government shouldn't be building stuff. They are grossly unaware of limitations or security holes they create in things because they build an app often once a decade and make only small updates after it is built and timelines are often more than a year not 3-6 months like they are trying to operate now.

Ehhhhh.

You can make the same case on corporations. Corporations tend to just not care about limitations or security holes. Or about keeping an old product up-to-date once there's no more revenue stream.

 

[code-m]

Personally I think they should abandon this whole idea as Bluetooth is too error prone for this, which they will probably realise after the trial.

I concur, Bluetooth also opens the door for hacking and how effective will this be if people just turn BT off. Opt-in now, the Government and Health Officials claim in order for it to be successful we need it to be “always-on” regardless of user consent or turning BT off. Today it is used for CORVID, tomorrow some other disease like HPV, STD, etc. Forget giving the individual personal choice to inform or take the appropriate precautions, who know the database may be hacked because you know that kind of thing will never happen and the next thing you know is people getting alerted for diseases their never had, causing people to get into a needless panic and heading to the hospital or taking drugs.

Sure no abuse can occur or “errors” of the system from government or malicious parties. What happens if you lend your phone, loose or misplace it?

If you are concerned about contracting a disease or interacting with others, may I recommend living in a plastic bubble and roll off a high cliff to save yourself the anxiety of life. Take about fear and panic culture.

 

[T-Bob]

If UK testing is good and/or hospitals not over capacity, then why is the death rate so high? It‘s much closer to italy and spain than germany and the US.

 

[nnoble]

Err, living in the UK, with a relative who has almost certainly had C19, and having done considerable research into the situation taking information from multiple different sources.

Here in the UK they aren't even regularly testing frontline health workers. People with suspected C19 are directed to stay at home, unless their breathing becomes seriously problematic, by which point the chance survival will have dropped significantly. The UK has managed to test slightly over 200,000 people so far of a population of 60 million. Germany are testing 500,000 people every *week*. And with testing barely available, there hasn't been ANY contact tracing to speak of, because what would be the point.

The UK's response to C19 has been woeful. I take my hat off to the NHS healthcare workers who are taking considerable risks to try and care for seriously ill people, but who are being failed by our government as they haven't even got appropriate PPE (personal protective equipment) which is necessary to keep safe.

Despite this the daily national press briefing claims that there aren't problems with PPE, when there clearly are. Our government are telling lies on a daily basis.

Living in the UK is evidence? ......... relative who 'almost' .......is not evidence. Our government are telling lies........more of the same. Upsetting, but it's just a rant and it doesn't help anyone.

 

[chucker23n1]

I concur, Bluetooth also opens the door for hacking

Bluetooth is locked down in both iOS and Android. You can't just have any app use Bluetooth at will without the user's consent. So I don't know what your "hacking" scenario is.

 

[MrGimper]

Stay Home > Protect the NHS > Save Lives

 

[scottishwildcat]

For those of you not into The Guardian, here is the BBC side of the story:

I'm afraid this won't help, the sort of people who "aren't into" the Guardian utterly *despise* the BBC.

 

[code-m]

Bluetooth is locked down in both iOS and Android. You can't just have any app use Bluetooth at will without the user's consent. So I don't know what your "hacking" scenario is.

Man-in-the-Middle collection. If the smart phone device is utilizing BT to Tx and Rx from the particular secure app with encryption it is logical that other devices are doing the same if both parties have consented. It is not unheard of for a Man-in-the-Middle collection or disruption. Similar have been demonstrated with other technology such as RFID, etc.

 

[palemonkey]

How is this even a published article?

the very last paragraph completely contradicts the headline.

Fake news

The team of people behind this app must be under tremendous pressure. Developers, testers, infrastructure, marketing, managers. And yet the media think it’s wise to publish an article that puts them under even more pressure