back to article Former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman calls on UK govt to legally protect data from contact-tracing apps

Harriet Harman, chair of the UK's Joint Committee on Human Rights and former Labour Deputy Leader, has redoubled calls on the British government to ensure any COVID-19 contact-tracing app sufficiently protects users' privacy. Earlier this month, the joint committee published a draft bill that attempts to define a framework for …

  1. I am the liquor

    "A minister's letter is not legal protection"

    And legal protection is not actual protection.

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: "A minister's letter is not legal protection"

      Maybe not, but it's the only kind that can be provided by law.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: "A minister's letter is not legal protection"

        The law can require that the fetishists don't collect the data. Then it doesn't need to protect it.

    2. I Am Spartacus

      Re: "A minister's letter is not legal protection"

      It was interesting when I looked as the Oxford University app. I am somewhat anally retentive abuout EULA so I downloaded theirs. Oh, yes, lots of happy-clappy statements about how safe the data was, how it won't be misused etc. And then it came to who they will share data with:

      Google

      Amazon

      AWS

      MailChimp (and here comes the spam)

      ....

      This list goes on. Unfortunately, I can't find it in the app store to confirm all of this. But safe to say, I was extremely concerned.

      1. getHandle

        Re: "A minister's letter is not legal protection"

        The amount of crap I get via mailchimp from companies I've never heard of, let alone signed up with... Bar stewards should be prosecuted.

  2. Chronos

    Oh what a tangled web we weave!

    A fine change of tune from Labour after clamouring for years for every scrap of information on the general populace they could possibly get their grubby little hands on. Admittedly, Harperson wasn't in the forefront of the data fetishists but she rarely spoke up against the likes of Smith and Burnham.

    Trust == 0; You burnt all those bridges during the NuLabour years and we're now all too well aware of the dangers of letting even a trusted government amass information as the regime could change in a heartbeat. In short, too little, too late and your pious bleating in favour of libertarianism now rings hollow.

    Can you imagine the fall-out of Wurzel Corbyn with the power of GCHQ at his disposal? Cripes!

    As for the contact tracing app, it's doomed to failure anyway. Remember those ticky-box forms about why spam control measures were utterly useless from days of yore? That.

    "Your solution relies on a) everyone acting in the same way at the same time b) why should we trust you anyway?"

    "Furthermore, this is what I think of you:" I dare not tick any of these given the woke thought police climate.

    1. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

      Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

      "Doing the right thing" is "doing the right thing" no matter what wrong has been done before.

      No matter what charges of hypocrisy, past failure, inaction, sins of the father, there may be; it's still the right thing to do.

      The only salvation for past wrongs is in doing right, and that should wholeheartedly be encouraged, not condemned.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

        No one involved in Nuliebour can ever do enough good to redeem what they have done.

      2. Wellyboot Silver badge

        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

        "Doing the right thing" is "doing the right thing" - indeed. However, This is just a career politician "saying" the right thing in the face of her voting history (23 times 'for' ID cards, once 'for' Mass surveillance) whilst being the Solicitor General & Minister for Constitutional affairs, positions that have quite a bearing on government policy towards public privacy.

        https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10260/harriet_harman/camberwell_and_peckham/votes

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

        "The only salvation for past wrongs is in doing right, and that should wholeheartedly be encouraged, not condemned."

        Yes, but to gain credibility there needs to be an acknowledgement of those past wrongs. Firstly it reassures us that they do realise they were wrong and secondly it makes it a good bit harder to go back there.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

      Harperson ? Who is Harperson ? The article is about Harriet Harman.

      If you want to rant, it would be really useful to at least seem like you know what you're talking about.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

        A rather weak joke regarding political correctness; man -> person

        1. MCMLXV

          Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

          You really didn't need to explain that.

          1. Persona Silver badge

            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

            Sadly I for one did need it explaining.

            1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
              Happy

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              You are really ManA and I claim my five pounds!

      2. rg287

        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

        Not sure if serious...? I suppose this happens with international audiences.

        At one point during Labour's last tenure Ms Harman was associated as a promoter of "Political Correctness gone mad". Consequently it seemed wrong to call her Harriet Harman since that was clearly sexist and furthered the oppressive patriarchy. So Harriet Harperson became a nickname in some quarters.

        Much like "Petty Patel" or "Priti Awful" (for our current death-sentence loving Home Sec), Tony Bliar (no luck catching them WMDs then?" ... "It's just the one WMD actually"), etc, etc.

    3. Arctic fox
      Headmaster

      Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

      Whatever the lady may have said in the past, is she wrong on this occasion? That surely is the point here hmm..? How about doing something truly revolutionary and address the points in the article - whataboutery contributes nothing to constructive debate. On this occasion (and yes I myself am absolutely no fan of Ms Harman) the lady has an important point that surely deserves support from those of us who are very concerned about the way the current emergency is being exploited governments salivating at the prospect of the amount of data they can gather on their citizens - supported by the big private enterprise data harvesters - I am sure I do not need to list the names of these companies.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

        "Whatever the lady may have said in the past, is she wrong on this occasion?"

        What she says now is one thing, what she has said over and over and over and over again is something else entirely. Like when Zanu Labour tried to assure us that our data would be safe with them, unlike if we had shared it with the clowns in the Tory party (which, if I recall, they blocked saying no government would ever need to hold so much data on the voters or words to that effect).

        How long would it take for them to re-write the rules on who can do what with which bits of the data once (if) they get back in?

    4. LucreLout

      Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

      A fine change of tune from Labour after clamouring for years for every scrap of information on the general populace they could possibly get their grubby little hands on.

      Indeed - such joys as ANPR so they can track vehicles, web surfing storage via those little black funboxes in every ISP etc etc.

      Thankfully under the last lot of commie clowns, labour lurched so far to the left that Hitler would have recognised them as a party he could work with, complete with their institutional hatred of Jews, that they've made themselves a total electoral irrelevance. Nobody has to care what the fool Starmer has to say, much less the has been Harperson; out of his depth as DPP, out of his depth as leader of the opposition, nobody needs to let him run the country to see how out of his depth he'd be there too.

      I'm ashamed to have ever voted for them, and so should you be.

      1. John H Woods Silver badge

        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

        "labour lurched so far to the left that Hitler would have recognised them as a party he could work with"

        Eh? I think you may be confused!

        1. John H Woods Silver badge

          Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

          Help me out here, guys. We have people who think the Nazis were left wing? Really?

          1. Arctic fox
            Headmaster

            @John H Woods Re: "so far to the left that Hitler would have recognised...."

            Indeed. For at least the last forty years a certain type of right-winger has attempted to "prove" that all dictatorships and all bestial conduct have all, by definition, been left wing. This of course leads them to claim that the German Nazis were left-wingers. The pathetic posting you were responding to is a classic example of that kind of rancid dishonesty. I am from the left and I acknowledge that certain systems claiming to represent the left have behaved in a truly vile way. It would be a positive contribution if the right-wing were able to make the same acknowledgment regarding systems that they know perfectly well could not possibly be described as left-wing. They will not of course - they will continue with their dishonest howling.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

            https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Socialist_German_Workers%27_Party&redirect=no

            they called themselves a national socialist party, the socialist part specifically to appeal to left- wing voters.

            Do some reading, not just Wikipedia, and come to your own conclusions.

            1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              And North Koreas party call themselves "democratic"

              1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

                Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                But they do, dear downvoter.. Scared of facts? Too busy downvoting all my posts to do your own research?

                That reminds me of a comment recently seen on youtube "i'd rather be lied to and conservative than know the truth and be a liberal"

                Have a nice day!

            2. gnasher729 Silver badge

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              "they called themselves a national socialist party, the socialist part specifically to appeal to left- wing voters."

              So why did they go out, heavily armed, to beat up socialists and communists?

              Anonymous Coward, you know nothing_ absolutely _nothing_, about Nazis.

            3. Alister

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              they called themselves a national socialist party, the socialist part specifically to appeal to left- wing voters.

              And the national part to appeal to the right-wing voters. So the Nazi party was centrist, who knew?

              It doesn't matter what they called themselves, they were a far right-wing party. This is accepted fact wherever you get your information from, except perhaps you and your sources...

          3. LucreLout

            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

            We have people who think the Nazis were left wing? Really?

            The greatest evils always come from the left. Nazis, Pol Pot, Stalin, Chavez, etc

            The cognitive dissonance required to be a left winger has always been astounding, which is presumably why as people grow up they tend to stop being socialists.

            1. Sanguma

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              The greatest evils always come from (corr. est) extremists from any political persuasion,

              There. FTFY

          4. Jamie Jones Silver badge
          5. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

            >Help me out here, guys. We have people who think the Nazis were left wing? Really?

            It's your common or garden gaslighting. That, astro-turfing and monumental whataboutery are the modern right's weapons of choice. Dishonest ****s.

        2. Jamie Jones Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

          A lot of people - mainly right wimg Americans - seem to think Hitler was left wing.

          It rrgularly appears in comments on American political youtube channels, from those that think their comment has just "owned the libs"

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

            Yes, it's worth bearing in mind that we have people posting from both sides of the Atlantic. On the left side of the pond, "socialist" and "liberal" have very different meanings to those of use on the right-side of the pond. For a start, here on the right-side of the pond, we don't see calling someone a socialist or liberal as a mortal insult.

            1. Circadian
              Joke

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              Ah, that might explain it. Compared to the current US government, Hitler is just a liberal left-wing commie...

              (Do I really need a “/s”?)

          2. codejunky Silver badge

            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

            @Jamie Jones

            "A lot of people - mainly right wimg Americans - seem to think Hitler was left wing."

            There is fair reasoning. Nazi and commie were fighting for the same left wing voters of Germany. The Nazi policies cleaned up of Aryan talk pass fine with Labour voters in the UK. Stalin and Hitler got on very well (it was in the USSR that Germany trained its WW2 army and tank manoeuvres when it was illegal for Germany to do so) and both used state directed economies.

            Both used concentration camps and execution to further their goals. Both blamed the rich (Jews vs Tsar). The difference seeming to be more in that Hitler listened to advisor's (initially) vs Stalin executing them and USSR nationalisation vs German state direction of private companies.

            And if right wingers are so racist and xenophobic why were the Nazi's led by an Austrian? *that being more of a humorous observation

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              "Stalin and Hitler got on very well (it was in the USSR that Germany trained its WW2 army and tank manoeuvres when it was illegal for Germany to do so) and both used state directed economies."

              You are incorrect. The cosy training happened before Hitler came to power. And most restrictions were viewed as uneccessary after the 2nd Geneva Conference in 1932. At around which time it was stopped by the Soviets. It appears you need to do a little more reading and research into history. There is no reason for you to make such elementary errors given all the resources available on the internet. Unless you are trying to concoct a false narrative to bolster your weak assertions?

              1. codejunky Silver badge

                Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                @AC

                "You are incorrect."

                You are so sure of your position that you hide behind AC. So as per your suggestion please feel free to read-

                https://warontherocks.com/2016/06/sowing-the-wind-the-first-soviet-german-military-pact-and-the-origins-of-world-war-ii/

                Cooperation between Germany and USSR pre WW2 got their forces up to scratch to conduct the war. Stalin didnt believe Hitler would turn on him even when the German forces were lined up on the border and his commanders reported it back to Moscow. The order (as I understood it) was not to fire on the German forces and to do so would be treated harshly (revised after the war started that those who didnt try to stop the Germans were put on 'trial').

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                  "So as per your suggestion please feel free to read-"

                  Thank you for posting this essay. It is an interesting read. But unfortunately it does not in any way back up your assertions. In fact it debunks them given it refers to German/Soviet training and technology collaboration between 1922 and 1932. Therefore predating the rise of the Nazi Reich. You are trying to conflate German/Soviet collaboration pre and post the rise of Hitler to forward your incorrect position that the two ideologies are the same. i.e. left leaning. This is a false narrative that is pushed by the modern extreme right to distance themselves from the heinous Nazi past. Whilst simultaneously attempting to tar the extreme left. There are easier and less dishonest ways to argue against extreme left politics without resorting to such sophistry and unintentionally (or otherwise) advancing current extreme right tropes and historical re-writes.

                  1. codejunky Silver badge

                    Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                    @AC

                    "But unfortunately it does not in any way back up your assertions"

                    You missed it. Here you go-

                    The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, formalized on August 23, 1939, was the final culmination of a two-decade crusade by both sides to arm themselves, eliminate the postwar order established at Versailles and destroy their mutual enemy, Poland. The resumption of military cooperation played a vital role in reforming the interwar alliance. Stalin, who had begun personally directing Soviet naval construction in 1936, made sure that the Soviet military received vast quantities of German military technology in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in exchange for Soviet raw materials. Germany again began to send its officers to the Soviet Union to advise and assist the Soviets in training and technical development. Further, in the fall of 1939, the Germans agreed to supply Soviet submarines fighting against Finland, while the Soviets did the same for German commerce raiders. At the height of cooperation, Stalin even granted the German Navy permission to open a secret naval base near Murmansk to interdict British shipping and assist in the invasion of Norway. Only with the German invasion of the Soviet Union would the last of the joint ventures be terminated.

                    "You are trying to conflate German/Soviet collaboration pre and post the rise of Hitler to forward your incorrect position that the two ideologies are the same. i.e. left leaning."

                    Which is very arguable that the National Socialists with socialist policies and while not nationalising they did command industries centrally were left wing.

                    "This is a false narrative that is pushed by the modern extreme right to distance themselves from the heinous Nazi past"

                    Which has some valid argument to it. Amusingly the heinous Nazi past was nowhere near as deadly as the heinous socialist past which killed far greater numbers than the Nazi's achieved. Walk around with a nazi symbol and you are looked down on (with good reason) yet people dont seem to have the same issue with the hammer and sickle.

                    "There are easier and less dishonest ways to argue against extreme left politics without resorting to such sophistry and unintentionally (or otherwise) advancing current extreme right tropes and historical re-writes."

                    Enjoy this then- https://hurryupharry.org/2018/11/02/labour-blog-publishes-half-of-hitlers-manifesto/

                    Who needs to rewrite when we can literally put it in front of the left now and see?

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                      I'm sorry you've misunderstood the essay you posted. It does not posit that the Third Reich under Hiltler was somehow a continuation of the Weimar Republic under Hidenberg. So your argument is spurious.

                      "Which has some valid argument to it. Amusingly the heinous Nazi past was nowhere near as deadly as the heinous socialist past which killed far greater numbers than the Nazi's achieved. Walk around with a nazi symbol and you are looked down on (with good reason) yet people dont seem to have the same issue with the hammer and sickle."

                      I think understand your viewpoint and agenda now, so I will leave it there and trouble you no further.

                      1. codejunky Silver badge

                        Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                        @AC

                        "I'm sorry you've misunderstood the essay you posted"

                        You obviously need to reread it then. In march 1993 Hitler secured power. The cooperation in the quote I posted being continued even in 1939.

                        I see why you are posting as AC. Your attempt to rewrite history shows your agenda.

                        1. Anonymous Coward
                          Anonymous Coward

                          Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                          >>You obviously need to reread it then. In march 1993 Hitler secured power.

                          Was that from his secret base in South America, or on the moon?

                          >>I see why you are posting as AC. Your attempt to rewrite history shows your agenda.

                          LOL

                          1. codejunky Silver badge

                            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                            @AC

                            "Was that from his secret base in South America, or on the moon?"

                            Lmao oops on the date. 1933

            2. Alister

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              There is fair reasoning. Nazi and commie were fighting for the same left wing voters of Germany. The Nazi policies cleaned up of Aryan talk pass fine with Labour voters in the UK.

              What complete bullshit. The Labour voters and socialists were vehemently opposed to the Fascist policies of the Nazis, and many of them went to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Communist side in an effort to win against the Nazi-backed Nationalists under Franco.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

                Nazi support for the Franco during the Spanish civil war just proves that Franco was a socialist...

                ... if you are a right wing Nazi denier.

                I'm sure in a few years they will be trying to convince people that the Black Shirts were just a misunderstood/maligned offshoot of the boy scouts. Hoorah!!

        3. genghis_uk

          Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

          They probably loop round and meet somewhere... Extremists tend to have a lot in common from both sides, they just approach from different directions

          Right wing extremists hate everything that is not their idea of 'normal' and will fight anything outside their bubble

          Left wing extremists want government control of everything people do. This is their 'normal' and will fight any dissent as not being in 'the best interest'

          The end result is if you are not with me you are against me and I will exterminate you. Hitler had a narrow idea of what was acceptable in his bubble but he also used government control over daily life to enforce his bubble so you could argue for both sides despite the generally accepted Fascist = Right Wing. I thnk there is a difference between right wing extremist's opinions and views and the reality of a far right wing government - in government it is harder to tell Stalin's version from Hitler's

          1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

            Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

            Though left wing extremists will cry for their safe space, whilst right wing extremist will lynch you! :-)

            But yeah, politic viewpoints are best described in 2 dimensions rather than one. This neatly shows what you are talking about:

            https://www.politicalcompass.org/

            1. codejunky Silver badge

              Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

              @Jamie Jones

              "Though left wing extremists will cry for their safe space, whilst right wing extremist will lynch you! :-)"

              The left wing march you to the gulag while the right to the concentration camp. Assuming we accept the national socialists as right wing.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Meanwhile we've got a clear indication of how much competence is going to be devoted to preserving privacy. Serco emailed 300 trainee tracers with CC.

  4. BenDwire Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Licence to litigate

    The way to have protections is through law.

    Is it? Is it really? I would suggest the best way to have protection is by design, so that the data exchange and retention are minimised. If (When) the breach occurs, then the information isn't that useful against individuals.

    All the data breaches over the recent past have rarely given anything back to the victims, but the lawyers always seem to do very nicely thank you very much. I'm reminded that NuLabour were headed up by lawyers, and I suspect the new lot have similar backgrounds, or mates.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Is it really

      Is it really indeed. The USA has a bunch of laws that protect individual privacy, but the NSA routinely runs roughshod over all that, and the FBI gleefully follows suit.

      Laws are worth nothing if you don't have people in the right positions that know and do their job to protect citizens.

      And there appears to be a dearth of that kind of human being these days.

      1. Gavin Park Weir

        Re: Is it really

        You need to at least have the law in place in order to have a chance at demanding correct design and of getting the right people in place.

        Having the law in place will not guarantee the latter two but its lack pretty much ensures they won't be met.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Is it really

          Was it the law, or was it something else, that helped stop various kinds of unpleasant "scientific" experiments on animals, in the UK and elsewhere?

          Was it the law, or was it something else, that helped stop the Poll Tax in England?

          Was it the law, or was it something else, that led Michael Heseltine to suddenly acknowledge the existence of Liverpool?

          What law(s) led to undercover cop Mark Kennedy/Stone spending years infiltrating peaceful protest groups in the UK?

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/8261958/The-wife-of-the-undercover-policeman-struggling-to-come-to-terms-with-his-secret-affairs.html

          I'd encourage readers to think about what happened, and how, and why.

          TL;DR: if voting really changed anything it wouldn't be allowed.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Licence to litigate

      > Is it? Is it really? I would suggest the best way to have protection is by design, so that the data exchange and retention are minimised. If (When) the breach occurs, then the information isn't that useful against individuals.

      Designing safe, secure, and privacy-protecting systems is difficult and expensive. Nobody in power is going to bother doing that, or paying for that, unless they're forced to by law. Or, rather, by sufficiently harsh consequences for breaking the law.

      1. gnasher729 Silver badge

        Re: Licence to litigate

        "Designing safe, secure, and privacy-protecting systems is difficult and expensive. "

        In this case, it wasn't that difficult (well, Apple and Google have hired some smart people), not expensive for the UK government (it's free, actually. Plus Apple and Google pay for all the infrastructure. Which isn't much, since all it needs to store is say 100 random codes of 50,000 infected people if we are very generous). No need to hire 18,000 tracers because everyone they would want to trace gets a notification on their phone.

  5. Bob Vistakin
    Devil

    The PIE lady knows best

    Just ignore anything which comes up when you Google Harman PIE.

    1. tip pc Silver badge

      Re: The PIE lady knows best

      that really is not safe for work or for home.

      Do the googling on a burner phone far, far away from home, maybe near a church?

      1. LucreLout

        Re: The PIE lady knows best

        that really is not safe for work or for home

        Quite.

        To save others googling, there are persistent allegations regarding how closely aligned senior labour MPs and union barons were with nonces throughout the 60s and 70s. There's no credible denial that they were in the same circles, only more recent attempts to distance themselves from their historic friendships.

        While the red arrows will undoubtedly fly, anyone googling the issue will find extensive links and statements that if we're being realistic show how politely I've summarized the issue above.

  6. Lotaresco

    Wrong demand

    She should be demanding that the app does not store and forward personal data. Not requesting better protection for that data once in government hands.

    1. dave 81

      Re: Wrong demand

      Correct. Doesn't matter what protections are in the law, it is proven that the Government will abuse what ever they have.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Wrong demand

        "Doesn't matter what protections are in the law, it is proven that the Government will abuse what ever they have."

        Where do Google offshoots and the likes of Cambridge Analytica and perhaps even Palantir come into your worldview?

  7. codejunky Silver badge

    Wow

    I am amazed that seat warmer is still around, never mind sharing an opinion on anything. She is no better than the current data fetishists and the lot need to have their entire lives dumped in public so they can see why its such a bad idea.

    1. Richard Crossley
      Big Brother

      Re: Wow

      I think she's just woken up.

      1. DJV Silver badge

        Re: Wow

        Yeah, but if given the chance to get back into power she'd soon fall asleep.

  8. Teiwaz

    Gods, it's just like 1984 in here today.

    Message...ignored

    Drowned by whatabouterism from grass roots tories.

    I notice really little mention for the current Govt. sponsored tracer app, which is a breach waiting to happen on so many levels.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a waste of money

    At a time when government coffers are under great strain, why spend money on an app + 25,000 human contact tracers that can't track fomite infections? The useful data is sympton reporting which should be shared live to all so we can judge for ourselves the risk of travelling to a particular area.

    We should prioritise money on things that prevent a virus spreading, like making our own masks and PPE in good time. /opinionated

  10. PhillW

    Redirect

    Wow,

    For a moment I thought I'd been redirected to the Daily Fail's comments section.

    So, do I

    a) instigate the next lot of gammony frothing by mentioning the EUSSR

    b) Go and find some informed debate about the app.

    Mines a b

  11. Deimos

    I will not be downloading it.

    Because I don’t trust anyone with that much personal info in one place.

    One point about harriets change of mind, its her job as part of the opposition to point out problematic stuff in government actions and laws. When harriet was in government it was the tories job to do that. It makes changing your mind almost compulsory.

  12. Libertarian Voice

    Bluetooth stack api

    Rumours are swirling that there is an api that will allow those who are granted access to it the ability to switch on radio without user intervention or even notification. Anyone know if this is true? I mean I would not be installing the app regardless, but the the api would be delivered by the vendor rather than the application so if this is true I will not be updating my phone in the foreseeable future and long term I will be going back to my Blackberry.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > Harman earlier described the current data protection legislation – which includes the Data Protection Act of 2018, GDPR, case law, and the European Convention on Human Rights – as a "tangle of law" that's "wholly inadequate" for the scope of the problem.

    It's only a "tangle of law" if you want it to be. We have essentially the same framework in the continent and things work out just fine, thank you very much. Yet another law is hardly ever the solution.

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