I don't see a distinction between 'metadata' and 'data' TBH - metadata is data, it's just as valuable as all other kinds of data.
I made the dangerous (and wrong) assumption that because I do that too, everyone else is doing it! You're right though. Look at the rise in social media (a plague come for us all) and how people put their whole life on display. Hell, I'm guilty of that too to an extent, but I like sharing my hobbies with other like minded folk. Ahh, lost in translation then. Problem is (IMHO) that even if there are laws passed to keep your data private (yes, I know, GDPR etc), how do you enforce it?
FT now has an interactive chart to play with here: https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart...ative=1&logScale=0&perMillion=1&values=deaths
I listened to an interesting discussion about the app on R4 PM yesterday, which had a good talk through the centralised / decentralised situation. Of more interest to me is that fact that iphones used bluetooth differently to android ones, and it's likely that interactions with sleeping iphones may not actually register a contact. As iphones make up a significant proportion of the market, this is a rather large potential point of failure. Apparently, Apple have very tightly controlled bluetooth access, and are opening it up for apps of this sort to use it in a way that iphone apps haven't been able to before. They also discussed mission creep and potential data misuse and over collection, it needs to be better thought out and overseen.
Mission creep and potential data misuse is my concern, especially as the UK government has previous form in terms of over-reach and misuse of data. It is almost certain that if the data is there, the likes of Cummings will feel tempted to mine it and will find a justification. This risk might be acceptable if the app actually worked and had a chance of reducing the impact of the pandemic, but it doesn't and therefore it won't.
That's not anonymous. That's at best pseudonymous, and trivially de-anonymised. A more robustly anonymous system would never record a unique ID for each device. Instead, you would record each encounter uniquely, and sign each with a private key held only by the meeting devices. That way every device can trace a log of every encounter, but nobody else can do so. If you test positive you can inform everyone of your encounters, who then can send warnings to their encounters (and you will never know these). And it can all be published publicly to allow tracking of contact events (because each event is anonymous) while still maintaining anonymity. At first glance this is also looks like of those rare cases where a 'blockchain' would actually be a useful database structure to use.
Careful, you know how the government feels about the 'E' word. You'll be put on a list just for suggesting it.
[rant] Ah, I thought things would be on the upswing with mandatory masks in public. I had to hit the costco finally to get TP. Then I see a Mexican family cruising the store. 8 of them, 4 kids, and no masks except for grandma bringing up the rear.
Well if the Commander in Chief walks around a mask factory not wearing a mask in a close huddle with others I can't say i'm surprised. Plus, apt song selection by the factory tannoy operator. Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date
...only i don;t think it was the factory that did it. Live and Let Die [and some of the other songs that where played while he was there] is one of the songs Trump likes to use at his rallies. ...which makes it even madder because it means his staff *chose* to play that song in the BG.
Given the current government's previous use of secret, illegal surveillance I'd say it's less a case of temptation and more likely that they already have plans about what to do with it and how to have greater layers of plausible deniability this time.
I'd bet money that the PPE says exactly what it's rated for on the box, that the supplier stated exactly what it was rated for on the order forms and that it's whoever got the brief of 'find me X number of X items now,' that gets the shaft. Given the speed it was procured with I doubt the factory ever had UK regulations in mind when they made it. Another reason why the running down of emergency stockpiles was such a terrible idea.
Quite why the media are shouting 'UK regs' is beyond me, the PPE directive is an EU directive, our regs (SI 2002 No 1144 ) are no different just implementing into law the EU directive. Would be intriguing to know more details, was it mis-bought or mis-sold?? Stockpiles are funny things, especially when they have use by dates.
