Here's the "report card" (PDF) on the app's data-gathering and privacy features, prepared by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties: <a href="https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ICCL-DRI-HSE-App-Pre-Release-Report-Card.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ICCL-DRI-HSE-...</a><p>The report is thorough, informative, and technically competent, IMO.
I'm an advocate that where possible all code paid for by the Irish Government should have to be open sourced under an MIT licence. Its bonkers this is not more wide spread practice.
Any reason for me not to use this? As someone living in Ireland who uses a smartphone and whose security model doesn't include worrying about targeted attacks by nation-level actors, but would like to avoid everything else.<p>From skimming respectable non-technical sources it's apparently not very invasive of my privacy, and won't kill my battery. But this is likely copied from the HSE press release, I'd like to hear the same from an independent reviewer.
I like their molecules, atoms, organisms approach to component organization. I hadn't seen that terminology used in an app before but it was immediately intuitive.<p><a href="https://github.com/HSEIreland/covid-tracker-app/tree/master/components" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/HSEIreland/covid-tracker-app/tree/master/...</a>
On a related note, anything that pushes OSS for government is IMO a Good Thing - forgive my usual self promotion here - <a href="http://oss4gov.org/manifesto" rel="nofollow">http://oss4gov.org/manifesto</a>
Timely reminder for everyone that there is as of yet no evidence that Apple/Google/DP3T/ExposureFramework based apps deployed in the wild actually work effectively. They've been deployed in a number of countries but there is currently insufficient available data to show that they actually work.<p>(of course we also know that limited disclosure apps not based on this framework developed in Australia, the UK, and France definitely don't work because of bluetooth issues)<p>(edited to add<p>See this paper out of Ireland: <a href="https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/bus.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/bus.pdf</a><p>One of the best use cases for apps like this is public transport, except that it doesn't seem to work on buses. Hopefully it works better on trains but given the similarly complex metal environment, I wouldn't hold out much hope.)
Have any US-based health authorities deployed contact tracing apps? Back in May, they were going to be coming soon, and I've not heard anything since.
Honestly, to me I feel the entire concept of 'apps' has been an abysmal failure. There's no evidence to suggest they've helped in <i>any</i> capacity. I think any contact tracing system is <i>far</i> more effective than using BT which was never designed to be used in such a capacity and feels more of a best-case 'hack' with current smartphone technology.<p>History will look at these 'apps' and will make conclusions based on their effectiveness, and the ones that are more privacy preserving will likely not rate highly on impact or usefulness.<p>If anything, this pandemic has enabled authoritarian regimes the capability of monitoring their populous 24/7 with wearable gadgets and apps that collect location/contact and other information.<p>To me, it highlights the importance of <i>not</i> using apps where possible and further highlighting how smartphones are <i>spies</i> for the governments around the world.