UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal Britain is sleepwalking into another coronavirus blunder by failing to listen to global consensus and expert analysis with the release of the NHS COVID-19 contact-tracking app. On Monday, the UK government explained in depth and in clearly written language how its iOS and Android smartphone application – undergoing trials in …
We dont trust them. But in this case they are the lesser of the 2 evils.
Since this is primarily a tech. & user trust problem who has the least likelyhood of screwing this up either deliberately or accidentally - the UK Govt or GooApple?
Google for all its evil user monetisation is a "trusted brand" compared to UK.GOV
Ah, but, there is Open Source, and there is Open Source. On the one hand you have a very popular Web server, supported by a passionate team who genuinely believe everyone should benefit forever from everything anyone ever does. And then on the other hand you have cynical corporations hiding binary blobs behind a licence that says you are allowed to distribute the Source Code, but good luck with finding it and everything else you need to build it.
They can release compiled binaries (and nothing else) under the Apache licence, or a BSD or MIT licence, and still call it Open Source. "Just exercising their freedom not to share" meets the letter of the law, just not the spirit.
It's why I don't mind the GPL at all. Having a rule obliging you to distribute Source Code sounds like an admission of impurity -- as though one would ever dream of not doing so! -- but it's a defence against those who would do more than just dream of it, if they thought they could get away with it.
They can release compiled binaries (and nothing else) under the Apache licence, or a BSD or MIT licence, and still call it Open Source. "Just exercising their freedom not to share" meets the letter of the law, just not the spirit.
Actually they can't.
They have to distribute the source code.
There are other fallacies with respect to Open Source, but that's not one of them.
I agree that within Open Source there are various licenses and you will find that there are flaws with them.
One could write an economics PhD thesis on the fallacies of Open Source and its impact on the IT world.
That's not to say that there aren't advantages to it, just that its not the panacea that everyone thought it was.
Which part of the Apache Licence 2.0 obliges the copyright holder to make the Source Code available?
My reading suggests that you can release just the compiled binary, or the Source Code in a form which is effectively unbuildable, and still be in compliance. All it says is you could not stop anyone from releasing the Source Code if they were able successfully to reverse-engineer it.
Actually they can't.
They have to distribute the source code.
Take a look at https://opensource.org/licenses and point out which parts of Apache, BSD or MIT require distribution of source code. GPL, Mozilla, CDDL and Eclipse do, the others don't.
You don't. The problem isn't who is more trustworthy; that's near-zero for both anyway. The problem is who is more powerful.
I would *prefer* not to give my personal information to anyone, but if I *have* to, I'd rather give it to a big corporation than to my government. Both are fundamentally amoral entities, and both could (and probably will) misuse that information, but the amount of damage that a government can potentially do to an individual is orders of magnitude worse than anything any corporation could do.
"the amount of damage that a government can potentially do to an individual is orders of magnitude worse than anything any corporation could do."
Except the corporations run the government ... at least here in the United States.
I've often said that the fastest, easiest way to reform government here in the US would be to ban professional lobbyists. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to define "professional" in this context.
The government have it already ... when they need to they can find out where you are and who you’ve been in contact with. I’m not too worried about that living in a relatively open and accountable country like the UK. If I lived in Russia or Turkey or China etc that would of course be a different matter, but then I wouldn’t have much choice...
Apple and Google are not writing the apps. They wrote the spec, you or I can write the apps (well I can anyway). So yes I trust my fellow app devs far, far, far more than I would ever trust GCHQ, Matt Hancock, Boris, Rhys Moggie and all their plum mouthed cronies.
Google know a lot about me, and for many years, but have not used the information in any sinister way. It is in their interest not to annoy me, a customer of sorts. And collaborating with a deadly rival is also reassuring for the public.
This Brexit government on the other hand is less reassuring, as others have mentioned. And the UK has not been very good at technology schemes so far.
The people behind this app (Marc and Ben Warner) were involved in the illegal Cambridge Analytica operations in 2016. They have shown to be law breakers with nefarious intentions funded by foreign far right groups. What makes you think they've suddenly bettered their lives and won't do it again?
It's telling that even Google's approach is more privacy conscious than what these people are planning.
Everyone is focusing on privacy as though it were an objective in itself. Harriet Harman made a good point about specific legislation about use and deletion.
The Apple/Google model does not start from the point of what is required to manage the virus. Which, in my view, is the only place to start from. The virus has no ethics and privacy may well be in fundamental conflict with our ability to fight the virus. So what is more important, privacy or physical safety? That is the real question to ask. Then, give an necessary amount of information to manage the virus, you legislate to control that information as best as realistically possible.
But starting from a privacy or nothing point of view and ignoring what data is actually needed to fight it is absurd.
The role of government has always been to keep its population safe. I think it is Google and Apple who are wrong in terms of starting from what is needed as opposed to privacy at all costs and hang public PHYAICAL safety.
Maybe you're new here - first post & all that.
The point has been made many times here that privacy is important in that governments in general and HMG in particular have proved themselves extremely untrustworthy in respect of that. In this particular case they have been unusually upfront and told us they can't be trusted - the data will be retained for research, whatever they might designate that to mean, and can't be deleted.
In this instance I'm prepared to credit Apple & Google, especially when they work together, as being altruistic, or at the very least, taking a long term view in that it's not in their interest to see a lot of their user base die.
I also remember that they're ultimately subject to GDPR and the DPA and that HMG isn't, having left themselves sufficient wriggle room when writing it into UK law.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
It's far more likely that the decision being taken to go with a centralised approach was simply down to the chosen developers being familiar with that model (it is how almost all software is designed) as opposed to an unfamiliar decentralised model.
Or, in the case of the British Government (and governments the world over): never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by arrogance and paternalism.
In general, treating responsible adults like responsible adults will produce positive and constructive results. As for the small number of irresponsible adults: a. they have to be lived with; and b. their selfish stupidity should not be allowed to hold everyone else hostage.
With something like C19 the mitigation only has to be 'good enough', so there is a good chance that a well implemented decentralised system will be more than 'good enough' for the job.
I'm only going to say this once, so take notes.
PVC Conduit, and rusty barbed wire.
- Insert conduit up recipients back passage.
- Insert rusty barbed wire through conduit.
- Remove conduit, and use it to smack recipient across the arse and back of thighs, forcing them to run with the barbed wire inserted.
> In general, treating responsible adults like responsible adults will produce positive and constructive results
Like we did when we asked people to just stay home and not gather, unless they had to, and just be sensible about it ? If it worked, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. The only positive results as a result of treating adults like responsible adults have been in bio labs running swab tests, up and down the country. The flaw in your argument is trying to apply 'sensible adults' to a general population of adults, in a situation where we have specifically seen the scope of damage from the less sensible fraction.
Except, arguably, the Govt. has at no stage (or with rare exceptions) treated the adult population as 'responsible adults'.
The Govt's. default position is secretive, defensive, blustering, with enough lying to make anyone with any brain ask, "Why should I trust a word these clowns say? Even when they are trying to be honest I don't trust them, because they spend so much time being dishonest - or, as we are supposed to politely put it, 'economical with the truth'"
There we have the outcome response to ingrained arrogance and paternalism - lack of trust and an unwillingness to take the Govt of the day seriously.
Except, arguably, the Govt. has at no stage (or with rare exceptions) treated the adult population as 'responsible adults'.
But, to be fair, the population of the Uk is not accustomed to being treated as adults, but then, the govt. went to a lot of effort with the education system the last forty years ensuring this.
I doubt the Swedish strategy would have worked in the UK.
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