More specifically…
- As its own disclaimer points out, regardless of what this paper says, what really matters is what the running code actually does. “Code is truth” as they put it. That is why open sourcing it is so important, so we can all read the code and see what it really does, not what the management thought they’d asked the developers for. They say they are going to open source it in the future. When they do, let’s see how much of it they open source. Because it is a centralised system we need to see not just the code on the phones but all the code on the servers in “the back end”. It will be difficult to know if they have opened up absolutely everything. For example there could be GCHQ code in the backend that they don’t open source and we would never know. So there could be parts of the system that don’t get scrutinised, have security or other problems, and we would never know until it was too late.
- The whole scheme is based on self diagnosis. This leads to many problems, as they admit. For example malicious users, (p.5, item number 7). Their mitigation is, unbelievably, that “expert clinicians” will be able to spot malicious events, plus, seeing if any contacts report symptoms within a few days (p11). So you just need a few mates to get together and you could shut down your employer, school, government department etc. And as for getting a “target” to have to self isolate, they acknowledge the problem but “This is future work” p11 para 7. Oh well.
- Self diagnosis includes submitting information about symptoms. That is not just personal data, it is a “special category” of data and it gets special treatment under GDPR. Lots of scary legal details about that here. This means that people like me (software developers working in healthcare) go to great lengths to avoid dealing with “special category data”. NHSx will need to be extremely careful not to open themselves up to legal challenges around this.
- A design aim is “It should not be possible for the recipient of a notification to determine which of the people they have been in contact with has asserted symptoms”. (p5, point 6). The problem is small data sets. If you spend all day round at your neighbours, and that’s the only person you see for a few days, and then you get a notification that “someone” you were close to has just tested positive, then it’s safe to say your neighbour has just had their medical privacy breached. They recognise this problem: “the low contact number problem” on p10, but the mitigation is: “suppression of the notification can, subject to a policy decision, be done locally in the app, using simple counting rules (subject to a small population around [the user])”. i.e. it won’t notify you that you spent all day with someone who was positive. Isn’t that the whole point of the app? I can see this aspect of the app having all sorts of ramifications and problems. Those policies and “counting” rules have edge cases and they are what eventually lead to headlines.
- They use family friendly terms such as users “donating” their data. Sounds like a blood donation right? I have never seen the word donation used like that and it looks like spin to me. The problem is that the user likely doesn’t know what the data is, nor what will be done with it, nor for how long it will be stored, nor who will have access to it, when deciding whether to “donate” or not. To comply with GDPR they need to know all of that, and be able to get a copy of all their data on request from the data controller (who is that in this case?). Perhaps the app will offer up all of that, let’s see.
- Interestingly the data includes a “country code” which “allows for multiple countries to interact”. Does that mean England, NI, Scotland and Wales, or other countries? Who else is going to be offered this system? What does “interaction” mean? It gets a mention again on p9: “where multiple countries are collaborating”. Interesting…
- The system depends on operators looking at out-bound notifications (p.10):
Notifications are queued for release and some cases will need to be triaged by humans before being released. This triage is for reasons of evolving epidemiological understanding, based on the data, as well as analysis and the need to filter of suspicious cascades.
My first though is that this does not scale. Perhaps this is what the 18,000 contact tracing people are being employed to do? In which case, how do you ensure that 18,000 people never make a mistake? - The data honeypot problem (p12, Reidentification risk) is brushed aside “This is a well understood problem…There is insufficient data here to attract any reidentification risk.” The problem is that insufficient data tends to get supplemented as more features are added, for example because of political demands to know something that is now of interest but wasn’t originally designed for. They admit this: “The risk comes as more data is added to the graph, or commingled with it” and they don’t rule it out, but just say it needs “careful consideration”. You bet it does!
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I was a little disparaging of Joanna’s last piece in DS, but this has far greater merit. I recognise myself and all my dangerous far right friends in these words. How to get this across succinctly though.?
Live and let live?
Sadly though the whole philosophy espoused in this article is now simply history. There is nothing I do not recognise but it is a longing for that which will never return. I fear that the next few years will brutalise our country and its British people. To imagine that our future is not dystopian is to close eyes to the wreckage that has been wrought and the wreckage that is to come under this WEF Labour government.
“You will own nothing and be happy.”
That is the future.
” is now simply history. ”
I know what you are saying but her words very much describe my life and where I live. I know I am lucky and privileged but the world she describes does still exist, here down the deep lanes of North Devon as depicted in the wonderful photographs of Jame Revilious. I will be out on Wednesday night at the village emergency committee, checking the list of the village’s emergency chainsaw operators. It may not last for ever and it may be under threat but at the moment it does still exist.
I’m with you on this SD and a good article yes – open gardens in our ‘village’ (fast growing into small town – thankyou central government planning overrule) bought people out in droves and umbrella’s yesterday to nosey around and call in and view the little garden my friend (82 + old frail & widowed) has made – a perfect small south facing garden, tamed by her knowledge and interest. And fortified by my rather fine (I say so myself) chocolate checkerboard cake. She and I both agree we are lucky to have the space to enjoy and the interest and the company to keep us both going. For as long as we can.
It’s the same where I live in the west country and it’s why I moved here 8 years ago.
But it’s changing fast: already a small town which was 98% white has visibly growing numbers of “ethnic minorities” who I very much doubt were able to afford to buy a property here, so they will be occupying social housing. I am not making a comment about them as individuals, they may all be perfectly lovely people, but the fact is the area is visibly changing … very quickly.
“And the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter” …. except as we see around the country and particularly in some areas the creed does matter … and it matters a great deal.
Ditto in rural Oxfordshire
Enjoy it while it lasts. Where I live was pretty much the same till bout 5 years ago. Now new packets of migrants get opened every week.
It isn’t 1955 anymore. The Vicar doesn’t cycle down the lane and my grandmother does not get her mangle out from the Anderson Shelter. There was no such thing as “diversity”. You got no money unless you worked, which is why my grandad spent 50 years down the Michael Pit. We didn’t eat micro wave junk and fill our belly with Cheesy Wotsits and Irn Bru. Young girls didn’t push their babies along in a pram and ignore them completely because they are fiddling all the time with their silly phone. ——-But then again people will say I have to move with the times. —-WHY?
Varmint yr family are very lucky to have you.
Why thankyou . I am very humbled.——–If you mean it
Agree.
I have never believed in change for changes sake.
The red thumbs down people are big Cheesy Wotsit fans obviously
How about this – conservatives care about people as individuals, the left just cares about the system.
They just care about power.
and votes
It’s an absolutely superb article. I may have been disparaging about her last piece too. I think what she’s saying here is the left (Tory, labour communist green lib dem) essentially has a complete god complex. Who here doesn’t think David Cameron would rather see Dianne Abbot as pm rather than Nigel Farage?
This!
Thomas Sowell puts it very well.
The policy arguments between liberals and conservatives, socialists and libertarians, do not arise just from differences in priorities regarding freedom, equality, and security. At root, they draw from different conceptions of the nature of man. The Left holds an unconstrained vision: Given the right political and economic arrangements, human beings can be improved, even perfected. Success is defined by what people have the potential of becoming, not by people as they are. The Right holds a constrained vision: People come to society with innate characteristics that cannot be reshaped and must instead be accommodated. Success in political and economic policy must be defined in light of those innate characteristics.
I recognise elements of this in the place I live – a county town in a fairly rural area, traditionally Tory. We now have a Labour MP. I think the problem is that a lot of the people involved in the kind of thing described in the article are simply too “nice” or too asleep.
Very well put, Joanna. I enjoyed this article a lot. I nodded a lot, too. Thank you.
Bang on… with the exception of enjoying Love Island! Nice, uplifting piece.
I do hate any article that makes a claim of something being better without saying what it is compared with.
It is as bad as claiming that change is a virtue when it is Labour change, whereas climate change is bad.
I take it from the article that we have not had a Conservative government for years, and probably decades.
PS I don’t have a deep memory of Lord Salisbury, I am not quite that old and anyway I don’t mix in those circles.
Not to mention warm beer and old maids cycling through the mist to church.
Give me a break. There is a horrible kind of demanded conformity in the vision outlined here. A kind of socialism, if you like, or subordination of the individual to the collective.
Thanks, Joanna, for reminding me that I am not, and never will be again, a Conservative. Let’s hear it for William Gladstone and not be seduced by the siren song of Disraeli.
Well, I don’t know if I am a conservative or not. Any society will have some element of “demanded conformity” won’t it? Don’t the problems start when the “demand” is with menaces – you must voice the right opinions otherwise you will lose your job, you must take this injection, you must give the state all your money?
That’s a nice village that you live in, Joanna!
You have nailed it Joanna
Sovereignty of the individual, self-responsibility, self-respect, self-discipline, self-sufficiency, property Rights, celebration of heritage, our common language, morals, values, manners, traditions and Common Law, free market capitalism/free trade.
Conservatism is adopt and conserve what gives best outcome – but experiment, evaluate, evolve – not obsession with process irrespective of outcomes.
Welfare State, NHS, State education, redistribution of wealth via taxation, State intervention in the economy, social engineering, telling us what we may/may not put into our bodies, State determination of values, morals, is not Conservatism. But that describes many ‘Conservatives’ and every ‘Conservative’ Government since the war.
Love it! Thank you Joanna.
Ah, what a lovely vision of Olde Englande, suddenly brought crashing down by… “LOVE ISLAND”????
She claims that “We Conservatives” all enjoy DISGUSTING PORNOGRAPHY and VOYEURISM????
Speak for yourself, Joanna.
And where in your Item 2 is the village pub and post office?