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UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
11–20 of 48 posts
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#12> The Home Office has also signed a £91m contract with French company Sopra Steria to set up computer terminals at 56 local libraries
Just £1.625 million per library? Does that seem a crazy amount to anyone else?
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#13So this is a smartphone app because they want to use the NFC in the smartphone to scan the passport.
Does anyone know how the NFC in a passport works? If it just communicates the passport number, then it seems like they could allow a fallback where the user types in the passport number, without any loss of security.
(Because if that is how it works, all you're really proving is knowledge of the passport number, not possession of the passport)
EDIT: According to this StackOverflow post[0] the NFC reader needs to supply the passport number, date of birth, and expiry date before it can retrieve whatever data is on the passport, so it can't work the way I described.
[0] https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/30772/what-nfc-...
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#14Any idea why Apple doesn't allow use of NFC? It's been in devices for ages, I'm surprise to hear it's not available to developers. Given Apple reviews all apps anyway, and can restrict what it's used for any way they like, I can't imagine why they wouldn't allow apps to use it.
Maybe they don't want NFC payment alternatives that would rival Apple Pay. And they don't want to restrict it for that use-case because it makes them look weak for artificially blocking out the competition so they just restrict the feature entirely.
Or the security/PR nightmare that would happen when someone used one of those that was poorly implemented and said “I paid with Apple Pay and all my money was stolen!”
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#15Considering what's a stake for citizens and the govt, one wonders would it make sense to partner with a commodity hardware manufacturer and split the cost of the device? Use recyclable parts and encourage people to return them for a fee?
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#16Agency: 'Oh yeah that feature is not supported, but don't worry there are rumours it's coming'
Government: 'Great let's base our whole system on this'
:|
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they don't want NFC payment alternatives that would rival Apple Pay. And they don't want to restrict it for that use-case because it makes them look weak for artificially blocking out the competition so they just restrict the feature entirely.
Or the security/PR nightmare that would happen when someone used one of those that was poorly implemented and said “I paid with Apple Pay and all my money was stolen!”
Or an anti-competition suit?
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#18iOS definitely supports NFC for third party apps. Here’s the documentation:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc
I just played with the Yubico iOS SDK just the other day and it supports my Yubikey 5 flawlessly.
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#19She told MPs the Home Office could not be blamed because Apple "won't release the upgrade we need in order for it to function".
Wrong. The Home Office should have checked with Apple before developing the app.
Re: UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
#20> The Home Office has also signed a £91m contract with French company Sopra Steria to set up computer terminals at 56 local libraries Just £1.625 million per library? Does that seem a crazy amount to anyone else?
Also, local to who? There aren't 56 points in the UK such that everyone has a local point for any reasonable definition of "local".