To the surprise of no-one...tracking app changes

[BeElBeeBub]

I don't think any of it is either workable or necessary, Beelybeeb.
We just need to take our own precautions, our own risks without government interference.
Yes, give advice.

by definition tracking and tracing can't be up to the individual.  How can I track if any if my contacts have tested positive? I am reliant (at the very least) on them contacting me (at a time where they are probably not best placed to call round everone they met).

Any track and trace system needs to be run at a governmental (local or national) level.

Edit
Just as an aside - if track and trace is so good we would not have had the epidemic in this country in the first place, would we. During the first stages they were tracking and tracing and it just gets out of hand. What on earth makes them think this will work 2nd time around?

Track and trace is never perfect.  If it were perfect (ie rapidly traces, contexts, isolates and tests 100% of contacts faster than the infection to infectious time) then it probably could stop CV with no additional measures.

However reality means it falls somewhat short of the ideal. The high number of asymptomatic individuals makes it harder as they are much less likely to appear on the radar until they have infected at least one other person.

T&T is one weapon in our arsenal.  A properly run scheme can reduce the R rate.  In combination with other measures (like masks, bans on large gatherings, restrictions on infectious activities and so on) it may be enough to push R below 1.

If we choose to ignore T&T then we simply have to work harder in other areas.

[Thomas]

As regards the assertion above that everybody except a few crazy left people think the PM is doing a fantastic job, the last poll I saw said that nearly 70% of people think the government has done a terrible job of handling the crisis (even about 45% of Conservative voters agreed if I remember correctly), and the ministers and policitians are no trusted to tell the truth about things.

Sigh#

Please quote me where i have said this javert.Stop making things up and putting words in my mouth .

I fully agree with you the public think the uk government has not done a good job in handling covid 19.

The point im making it isnt enough to topple johnson and his government , nor are they in any danger of being voted out in the near future , hence my suggestion of picking your battles carefully.

Johnson wasnt elected in december 2019 because he was seen by the public as some sort of pandemic handling whizzkid , or some masterfull politician who would never make mistakes in government.

He was elected to get brexit done. Until the uk is fully out the eu , you wont touch him is my point.

Now Thomas may be right that this doesn't matter because maybe a lot of those people think another party would have done an even worse job, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a black mark that people have noted against the government, and may count against them in future years.

It may very well.

...but into that equation as i keep telling you  , you need to evaluate the electoral currency of the blairite faction back in charge of labour , and of course the wider uk left. There is only so long they can disingenuously blame seat losses and electability on corbynism . Next time their own fingerprints will be all over the result.

The electoral disaster pre corbyn of jim murphy and ed milliband in 2015 seems to be a distant memory , easily forgotten and brushed under the carpet for the blairites.

Also Thomas constantly talks about "lefties" being wrong and so on, but from my limited understanding of Scottish politics, the SNP are considered more a left wing party closer to Labour on the political scale than to the Conservatives.

Then you dont understand the snp and wider yes movement and havent been paying attention to my posts.

I talk about the uk left , who arent the same as the scottish left. Both are implacable enemies , but then you wouldnt know this would you or how the uk left in scotland jump into bed with the tories on many occasions while in england telling the english public the tories  are the devil incarnate.

[Javert]

Public health tracing is not normally considered a violation of human rights.

In general I agree, but the issue here is that it appears to me the app contract has been awarded using a corrupt process and I do not trust the government, nor the organisation that's developing the app.  What's more, they continued spending money hand over fist on this app even after they'd been told by almost all experts that it won't work.  Still, this is the same as Brexit I guess where experts are automatically wrong.  And yet.... they app still doesn't work and they have even now admitted that it doesn't work.

As regards the assertion above that everybody except a few crazy left people think the PM is doing a fantastic job, the last poll I saw said that nearly 70% of people think the government has done a terrible job of handling the crisis (even about 45% of Conservative voters agreed if I remember correctly), and the ministers and policitians are no trusted to tell the truth about things.

Now Thomas may be right that this doesn't matter because maybe a lot of those people think another party would have done an even worse job, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a black mark that people have noted against the government, and may count against them in future years.

Also Thomas constantly talks about "lefties" being wrong and so on, but from my limited understanding of Scottish politics, the SNP are considered more a left wing party closer to Labour on the political scale than to the Conservatives.

[Thomas]

I don't think any of it is either workable or necessary, Beelybeeb.
We just need to take our own precautions, our own risks without government interference.
Yes, give advice.

Edit
Just as an aside - if track and trace is so good we would not have had the epidemic in this country in the first place, would we. During the first stages they were tracking and tracing and it just gets out of hand. What on earth makes them think this will work 2nd time around?

On a wider note barry , its interesting to watch the "uk left" continue to flog a dead horse over coronavirus and many more issues like brexit.

They say you should pick your battles carefully. The uk left seem not to understand this.

Continuing to attack johnson and his government over covid 19 in the hope something sticks seems futile to me. I have watched them largely over the last 6 months or so throw mud at johnson on this issue , and they have barely laid a glove on him.

Largely down to the fact the public are prepared to forgive him over his mistakes due to this being a global pandemic that all countries are struggling to cope with to a lesser or greater degree , and of course getting brexit done.

So beely is largely standing in a dark room shouting at himself over track and trace and other issues covid  related.

Wether its brexit , scottish indy , Black lives matters or whatever , it never ceases to amaze me that the uk left appear to be on the opposite side of public opinion on most matters.

Seems a futile line of attack when these are the very people you are trying to get votes from. Simply ignoring the majority ( or in denial about what the majority want)opinion while thinking you will get them to vote for you simply by throwing mud at political opponents and calling them names seems daft , but its a lesson they dont seem to be learning.

[Barry]

I don't think any of it is either workable or necessary, Beelybeeb.
We just need to take our own precautions, our own risks without government interference.
Yes, give advice.

Edit
Just as an aside - if track and trace is so good we would not have had the epidemic in this country in the first place, would we. During the first stages they were tracking and tracing and it just gets out of hand. What on earth makes them think this will work 2nd time around?

[BeElBeeBub]

If they told you that you need to isolate for 14 days, Javert, would you do it?

I prefer not to put myself in that position, so will be avoiding restaurants that take names and addresses - and would not cooperate with trick or treat.
Maybe the government need to start "ramping down" the control of the population and just let us get back to our human rights and freedoms.

Public health tracing is not normally considered a violation of human rights.

For example if a partner were diagnosed with HIV would you want to be traced and informed?

Should they be subject to responsibilities to prevent infecting other people?

Linking back to the app and your comment about pubs and restaurants taking contact details.

Again if you went to a pub or restaurant and 2 days later the barman/waiter was diagnosed would you want to be informed before visiting an elderly relative?

The problem is, the government have dumped the whole contact recording hot potato in the lap of businesses that aren't trained or equipped to handle it

The potential problems of people (women in particular) who go to a bar being forced to hand over their name, phone number and address for any random bar staff member to look at and harass are huge and obvious. This has already happened in NZ.

The technological issues with Bluetooth aside, a contact tracing app that uses the same principle (decentralised, anonymous on phone processing), would remove this burden from businesses.  This would allow give confidence to patrons to visit businesses.

If it were made a condition of the "plus" part of "1meter plus" that businesses implemented the system (see below) and customers had to "log in" when visiting that would also drive adoption.

Would you trade using the anonymous app for being able to shop, go to restaurants and meet up with friends? ..

Technical bit.

Develop 2 apps using the anonymous GApple system of random tags and an onboard database.

However ignore the blue tooth bit. Instead, use QR codes displayed on the screen and scanned by the other phones front facing camera. That way you hold you two phones up to each other and they exchange tags via the QR codes.

1 app is for people, runs on phones.

The other is for businesses and runs on tablets, laptops and phones. That is designed to be permanently on and mounted by the enterance etc.  It also has the option to sync across multiple devices so they all so the same tag at the same time so you can have the same code at two different enterances, or on each table etc

From the apps PoV businesses are just like people, they register that tag "1234" has met them (and "1234" registers that they have met "5678") and so on.

If "1234" subsequently flags as +ve, the business app assumes it is +ve from the moment that tag registered and then informs all the other tags that were registered at the same time.

If you really want to get fancy, the blue tooth part could probably be used to monitor how long a tag remained in the premises.

[johnofgwent]

And will they make it the law that people install this software on their own phones?
No, thought not.

The fact it's cost £250 million of taxpayers money on a useless app developed in nepotism is what's important not whether or not it be made compulsory on the populations phone.

OK. Speaking as someone who has managed to get "hello world" running on an iphone, an android phone AND a WINDOWS PHONE too (!!!) it was starkly obvious to me from day one that getting an app to work with apple is like getting an ayatollah to buy a round in a bar. So what really concerns me is why they even bothered. West of Offas dyke the answer is the spad they had recommended HIS Mate Dai Agnostic. who had piss all knopwledge of writing software but he (and the spad who put him in the picture) were the only ones who spoke welsh, see...

[Barry]

If they told you that you need to isolate for 14 days, Javert, would you do it?

I prefer not to put myself in that position, so will be avoiding restaurants that take names and addresses - and would not cooperate with trick or treat.
Maybe the government need to start "ramping down" the control of the population and just let us get back to our human rights and freedoms.

[Javert]

That's the type of re-wording of the full fact article that is exactly the type of thing full fact is there to fight.

They actually say that it depends on how you define functioning.

If you define functioning as being an app that is available and works according to the specs, then quite a few countries already have that.

If you define it as being used by over 60% of the population and proven to be reducing Covid-19, then no.

What's notable to me, is that based on this article, if you conclude on the latter definition that no country has a functioning track and trace app, you would also have to conclude that the UK most certainly does not have a functioning contact tracing system, whereas on that item, the PM claims that it is functioning well.  Perhaps he should apply some consistency there?

Also mentioned by full fact and backed up by quite a few scientists is that the value of these contact tracing apps is not proven for various reasons.  Aside from the accuracy of the distance detection in large crowds (which is probably more a limitation of bluetooth itself), there are significant behavioural science issues involved where it's debatable whether people will self isolate for 14 days based on a message from an app, and the personal touch and a bit of friendly persuasion and help might be needed in many cases.

I guess if the apps used GPS location tracking in combination with Bluetooth as well, and pooled all the information centrally to detect contacts, that would function even better, but I think that this is forbidden for data protection and privacy concerns.

[Barry]

From Guido Fawkes website:

At PMQs on Wednesday, Sir Keir appeared to score a victory in attacking the Government's track and trace app failure. Fighting back over the failure of their NHSX app, Boris asked Starmer whether he could "name any country in the world that has a functional contact tracing app"; Keir immediately shot back with "Germany".

Full Fact has now examined Boris's claim that "no country currently has a functioning track and trace app" and concluded the PM is correct, on the basis that while multiple countries – including Germany – have launched apps, the low download rates mean they cannot be accurately described as "functioning". "It's too early to say whether they will be effective in helping combat Covid-19."

We were told at least 80% of the country must download the app for it to be effective. In France, the figure stands at 2%; in Germany, 14%. In Singapore, the failure to persuade more than 20% of the population to download the track-and-trace app has forced the Government to develop "wearable tracking devices" for citizens, which will not rely on possession of a smartphone. A policy beyond Orwell's imagination...

[BeElBeeBub]

It's an OS update adding the API for any tracing app (one per country) to use.

It's just the "hooks" any app would use.

It's similar to Apple/Google updating their OS to provide copy and paste or voice control.

Until the UK creates an app, the functionality is simply unused.

GAppple have said they will only allow one official app per country to avoid fragmentation.

I can see why, but tha t didn't take into account how crap the UK government would be at managing this situation.

The kings symptom tracker is already used by 3m+ and I'm sure it would be easy enough for them to bolt on the tracking part to their existing app.

Potentially could also allow some (optional) extra data to be collected. If the app correlated symptoms with tracking alerts it might offer additional insight.

[Barry]

No actual app has been installed on your phone and there is nothing being tracked unless you specifically install an app to do that and explicitly give the app permission to start collecting data.

Yes, you are spot on with that post, Javert.

[patman post]

Owners of iPhones can find it by going to Settings > Privacy > Health.

Then  will come the message:
Apps that have requested access to your Health data will appear here...

[Javert]

And will they make it the law that people install this software on their own phones?
No, thought not.

Seems there is no need for a law.
The software has been installed on phones silently, and without permission.
Owners of iPhones can find it by going to Settings > Privacy > Health.
Owners of Android phones go to Settings . Google Settings.

Is this not an abuse of our property?

I might have to go back to my Nokia 3210

No tracking software has been installed on your phone.

The latest update to the operating system contained the API (application programming interface) needed so that the covid-19 tracking apps that some (competent) countries have been able to produce already and start rolling out.

No actual app has been installed on your phone and there is nothing being tracked unless you specifically install an app to do that and explicitly give the app permission to start collecting data.

Being as we live in a country with a completely incompetent and corrupt government, I doubt there will be any app available here any time soon, so the OS update is currently useless in this country and does nothing.

Further, even if you are concerned you can quite easily stop it by switching off bluetooth on your phone, but there is no need to do that as it will not do anything until an app (that you install voluntarily) makes use of that API call.

The ability to see things on the screen and move them using your finger was also installed silently on the phone without your permission - are you going to complain about that as well?

[Barry]

And will they make it the law that people install this software on their own phones?
No, thought not.

Seems there is no need for a law.
The software has been installed on phones silently, and without permission.
Owners of iPhones can find it by going to Settings > Privacy > Health.
Owners of Android phones go to Settings . Google Settings.

Is this not an abuse of our property?

I might have to go back to my Nokia 3210