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Only they're not, because they actually listened to Google's and Apple's press statements on why a contract tracing API was necessary. Italy and Germany have made their code open source.

And it's not necessary for journalists to even understand technology, all they had to do was listen to Apple and Google's press statements on the matter and draw the logical conclusion that the British world beating app was beaten from the start. It ain't a matter of balancing opinons, it's fact vs. opinion.

But I guess it's easier to just copy verbatim whatever the minister is twunting on about today. Like "every other country building their own app is also now hitting".

Add this app to the list of yet another government IT failure, only this time the general public got to see the failure happen in real time, so this time there's a chance they might understand that a tech-adverse and fact-adverse ruling class being "held to account" by tech-adverse journalism incapable of checking facts actively works against the country's interests.

Rant over.

World beating or beaten by the World...

The problem with clinging to rose-tinted World views is that they probably thought it was as simple as boffins in sheds, "we had that clockwork radio bayliss guy (ripped off and died without adequet compensation for his invention), Dyson and sinclair, just need to harness some British pluck with plenty of spunk" said the guy leading that circle jerk of ineffective handling

I suspect a lot of conversations inside this government can be described as a circle jerk of ineffective handling with plenty of references to British pluck and spunk.

So true, Dan 55; in the unending race to the bottom, our mainstream media sites are now written by semi-illiterate cheap or zero-hour arts grads who copy what they read on Twitter or what press release was emailed to them - without any sort of fact checking or independent thought at all.

It staggers me how utterly stupid many of today's journalists are, and how they still really think they can write with authority about anything.

I used to read the Independent regularly, but stopped as it got worse and worse - but look how bad their 'tech' section is now. It's shocking: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech

"It staggers me how utterly stupid many of today's journalists are"

The present doesn't have a monopoly. About 40 years ago the RUC carried out an excavation where a body was supposed to have been buried. It was next to the practice tee at a golf course and although there was no body it turned out to be a golf ball mine and several golf-playing police officers took away their haul in clear polythene bags. The press, kept at a considerable distance, reported samples being taken for analysis in white plastic bags.

I'm sure that elReg's journos are not like that!

Every other country except France, apparently, where they have produced a home-brew app that works and was available in good time, albeit with privacy concerns because of the centralised database.

Given how much the French sleep around, they withdrew the tracking app on the grounds that every French person has been in deep and moist contact with pretty much every other French person.

See also: Italy.

it's like the parson's egg; "parts of it were excellent".

distance measurement by Bluetooth is an approximation. if the world beating algorithm is good, then it should be shared with the world.

beating covid-19 is not a competition.

Certainly shouldn't be, but of course in reality it is.

Many countries want the presumed kudos of being the first to beat it, to show they are better than everyone else. Be that by developing a vaccine, or by having the best contact tracing.

UK perhaps more than most, because Boris will see it proves the UK can survive and lead in a post-Brexit world. Why work together when we're so "world beating".

"54,000 people downloaded the software" can request their data now be removed.

The fact Matt couldn't even get his own, personal app right, shows we need not listen to any of his advice regarding IT.

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2018/02/01/matt_hancock_app_privacy_bug_ed_vaizey/

Is Hancock seriously suggesting that Google couldn't come up with Bluetooth LE distance measuring code without input from "NHSX" developers?? Face saving tripe.

NHSX "developers". FTFY.

Can't remember where I saw it, but there was a long list of reasons posted by the Gov as to why this wasn't possible. e.g. Walls, open spaces, train carriages, metal. Causing contacts to seem either further away or closer, with obvious disastrous effects either way.

It's no real surprise that Google/Apple have a simpler and more limited set of distance values and don't try to estimate it, because you can't.

I can however see why they've got themselves tied up in this knot. A de-centralised anonymous approach means it's harder to issue a strict instruction to self-isolate and test. It's not a tool for contact tracing, it can only really serve a contact awareness role.

It'll only take a handful of people receiving notifications to self isolate who know for sure they haven't been within 2 meters for the word to get out that the app gets it wrong, then no one will take it seriously at all.

The only tech I can see useful is an app that tracks movement and attempts to gauge contacts as an alternative for full isolation for traced contacts and similar tech may have a role as a quarantine alternative.

You are Matt Hancock and I claim my £10.

I'd be interested to see how the government code works out distance. I don't really understand radio any more than your average consumer. I'm able to listen to radio, use bluetooth and wifi, but have little understanding of the underlying physics. However, I know from my own experience, radio in general is badly affected by obstacles. How does the government's code account for this? I can understand you can get a fair estimate of distance if you know the signal strength, and and how quickly it decays, but what if the signal strength is already degraded due to a wall or some obstruction between the sender and reciever? I don't know what is actually transmitted, so it's possible they are already including the initial strength in the signal.

Take, for example, two people standing two meters apart, but with nothing separating them. One person's phone would ping the other's fine, and if he or she were a Covid sufferer and had registered as such with the app, would trigger the other person to get a notification. Now, imagine there was a wall between them. The material the wall is made from may reduce the signal strength. This is likely to increase the estimation of distance, so the other person appears to be 4m away from the carrier. They wouldn't get a notification, but the virus could have travelled around the wall (maybe through a door, or over it).

Be interesting to see what the government have done to circumvent the unreliability of this method of distance estimation, but I don't hold out much hope we'll see anything. They did open source the project, but the github repo is only showing minor updates (mostly readmes) since the project was intially uploaded to github last month, so they aren't being open about whatever changes are being made.

Not sure the wall thing matters that much. If there's a wall the signal may be weaker - so I appear to stand further away - but then there's a wall - so though the virus might sneak through it's less likely to - so my 'effective' distance from the other person is greater.

This is all a game of probabilities after all. The app is only really going to be useful outside family/friend groups. In those groups you are going to have personal knowledge of potential infections. In an office/factory/one to one home visit/medical etc situation good paper record keeping is probably as effective. So you are basically talking shops you spend a lot of time in (barber, tatoo parlour, comic store in the Big Bang Theory) and bus/train journeys.

"This is all a game of probabilities after all."

Amen to that.

Social distancing, 1 vs 2 metres, indoors vs outdoors, R values, opening this sort of establishment before that; it's all a matter of estimating and managing probabilities. I think SAGE have probably managed to get this though to the politicians. Whether either of them gets it through to the general media is a little more doubtful. Whether the media would make an attempt to get it through to the public - no chance.

You forget to mention Apple. Whether you like them or not, they are a trillion dollar company and can afford a *lot* of very good developers, so no doubt have a lot.

"we’ll share our algorithm and the work that we’ve done on distance calculation and combine that with their work to deliver a new solution."

By which he mans "...and end up using the Google/Apple one but changing a few parameters from "X" to "X*0.00000000001".

I do hope you meant X PLUS 0.00000000001 because what you've stated makes a pretty huge change to the parameter. That is likely to completely screw up the app and make it useless... oh hang on, nope, as you were...

Or more likely "...and end up using the Google/Apple one but changing a few parameters from "X" to "X*1.00000000001"

Lord Bethell answered that “the scale of it is enormous – no other country is doing it on such a great scale” but it was “already showing some features which frankly are totally world-beating”.

This government sound more like POTUS 45 every day. I am sure they are using 1984/animal farm as instructions.

For someone with absolutely no IT-related qualifications whatsoever and who got the job without even the minor trouble of being elected, one suspects that two tin cans and a piece of string would seem totally world-beating.

Is the string the regulation two metres?

Of course not!!! We don't need those continental measurements. 2 yards, unless you llive within 10 kilometres of the coast, in which case you can use a fathom.

10 kilometres? What are you thinking man? 49 furlongs 7 chains, surely...

The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!

I apologise profusely and will beat myself with an imperial stick.

He seems to be unaware that Germany is a country with 17 millon more people. Italy admittedly is a country with 6 million less but then again they have a working app too, they rolled it out at the end of last month.

This government sound more like POTUS 45 every day. I am sure they are using 1984/animal farm as instructions

They can't be using 1984 as a guide, the authorites in that tale are vaguely competent.

Animal Farm is a definite possibility though, with all the bull and horseshit involved...

More like Only Fools and Horses

Del Boy Johnson, Hancock as Trigger and Cummings as Uncle Albert

Ministers are agile in changing horses, but is the NHS App project yet another Agile failure? "Yes we can do this, but it might need a few fast iterations..."

I think this is more likely to be a failure of an arrogant Designer / Dho came up with the "cracking idea" of using unpublished and unsupported API's and a sloppy work around rather than using the published API's supported by Apple. This was probably compounded by an even more arrogant "Senior Manager" who still believes that Britain is a superpower who would be able to demand that Apple change their rules on API usage. I've come across this many times in the past including being told to get IBM to change their global terms and conditions to suit a English County Council. as you can imagine that went well - not

AC as I'm still contracting in the government sphere.

...now that NHSX / GCHQ won’t be using it to slurp my physical contact history. Result.

....If I was you, I'd wait to see what "they" finally come-up with......

I had assumed it was all transferred directly to Dominic Cummings election manipulation database.

. . . . in England

like world series baseball.... though, to be fair, the world series does include Japan.

Why don't Google and Apple co-operate and develop the app and roll it out as a critical public safety update across the globe?

They could have done this months ago.

It would save countries across he whole world duplicating effort and going down rabbit holes. And think of the number of lives it could have saved / would save.

And the app would also work once international travel resumes.

They routinely push out updates that help them maintain their not so insignificant income streams.

They have the technological prowess to make it happen.

About time they did something that gives something meaningful back to the public.

Because the egotistical politicians that run those countries can't accept that they can't do it themselves / better (and don't forget, their friends need contracts to help them through the current economic mess).

There are templates / frameworks that could possibly be used (and also some open source implementations) to get something working and save their images at the same time.

Or am I being overly cynical?

Nope. Not at all. Personally, I think you've nailed it.

Because then you and I would be shouting about Google and Apple slurping people's health data. By banning all COVID19 apps not written by a sanctioned government department they side step awkward issues like that and having to police a deluge of fake health apps. This is a good thing.

... the app would also work once international travel resumes.

Methinks this is a very important point, and I've not seen it mentioned anywhere else.

International travel has not stopped completely, international trade continues to take place, people resident in different countries are still encountering one another in various ways and there is some risk of cross-infection at most of them.

A contact tracer that relies on the database of interactions within one single country can never provide a complete picture, as infections may occur off-stage, as it were. The decentralized solution wins here by a mile.

It's always the same.

"We must collect this data and store it centrally (for at least 20 years)"

Why?

"Because we must"

Why?

"Because it's this thing we do and the universe will fall into chaos if we don't know everything about everybody all the time forever"

It's not a policy. It's a personality disorder.

I assume you endorse the Home Office's decision to destroy all the "windrush" landing records then?

Those are "official records", completely different story

Prof Nello Cristianini, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, University of Bristol, said (referring to the Apple/Google option):

"With information collected from other sources (including the fact that your phone receives the Bluetooth mac address and name of the other persons device when you make ‘the contact’) it may still be possible to put together a list of all of the contacts that a particular device has seen, and re-identify some of them. Further, as we point out in our recent papers the registration details you provide when downloading, installing and registering the app, along with metadata collected by your ISP and the central (even though we are calling it decentralised) server means that those operating the server may still be able to identify you, your contacts, where you have been (location) and when."

Source: Science Media Centre, the original text includes the references.

I don't know if this is right. Anyone else?

Isn't an Apple application required to meet certain standards? A condition of using the API is not slurping data -- and the application being deleted when the pandemic's over.

Is it still possible for the app maker to hijack and centralise the API data anyway? Having a "hybrid" approach suggests so.

Even if the UI cannot officially access the API backend, NHSX's willingness to use hacks to get what they want doesn't inspire confidence.