I guess China/HK doesnt have a monopoly on stupidity. There are actually multiple apps in Australia, one released by the federal government very early on in the pandemic called Covidsafe. That uses bluetooth, but appears to have not been very effective, I think was released before Apple/google did their own implementation. But then recently each state government has decided to implement their own local systems and where I am is a bloody QR app called safeWA. Works exactly the same as the HK one, but they have gone really overboard here and made it mandatory. Everywhere I turn is a bloody QR code I have to scan.Original Post Deleted
Plenty out there with old phones that don't support the protocols. All very nice in theory in the middle of a campus in silicon Valley, but has anyone seen any clear evidence of the google/apple tracing actually having a meaningful impact anywhere? I personally see no issue with the design and find it hilarious that people are contemplating using burners. If you've ever used Didi or Wechat you'll know what a proper data harvesting app looks and feels like...
I don't know anyone in London who has had any meaningful benefit or notification from the Google apple protocols despite covid being massively prevalent in the general population (somewhere between 4 and 10 percent).
Bluetooth is not used for quite obvious reasons.
For person-to-person contacts tracing:
- not so easy to enforce/verify application is working
- it can be switched off immediately after verification
- even if not switched off, it's not reliable
For location visits tracking (use bluetooth booths instead of QR code stands)
- much more complicated to deploy and maintain.
.. and using Bluetooth would spark even more privacy concerns.
I do think adding (maybe optional) feature to sync/save visits (maybe to your own cloud account) could be useful. What if user had a genuine reason to reinstall the app, and wants to get his 31-day records back.
It is such a pity that it is has been introduce so badly,
In principle the idea of finding people that may have been in contact with someone infected is a excellent and it could be done with where we have total protection of a privacy with the right model.
Tthe government has made no effort to build trust or hired foreign (trusted) firms to audit the system and prove that people should not be concerned about it.
If we all used it a lot of the "controls" we are facing today could be removed overnight. It just the execution and roll out is piss poor. All that has be done is reduced dinning/shopping efficiency and make people aware to mistrust the government further.
Yet another issue is that the APP has as whole record as to where you have been, if you are stopped and searched they can collect that data... The app could be made to upload that data at some stage, next time it updates etc...etc...
The security/privacy architecture is broken in many places, starting form the HK Government itself operating it.
Also those of us that are filling in the paper forms should not fool ourselves. Where are those papers going? We maybe giving more information by filling in the form. Are they all going to the government and being OCRed?
Filling in the form you have to be careful, too best you don't put a full name/phone and just an email address to anonymise yourself further.
I just tested the app and it pulls the infection data from this API every time you check in and out of a venue.
https://www.regqr.gov.hk/app/v2/batc...h.json?noembed