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Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

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Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#61

Post by sizzlersaladbar »

mcannon wrote: post #35

I believe the government, PM and various ministers have said the code will be released. My sources also say exactly the same. They’re obviously operating with extreme urgency to get the app out. For you. Give them a few weeks to clean up code and release it (which is very normal) - but in the meantime, here are some tips: - Turn the HN angry mob mode off - it’s not helpful. We’re all in this together. - Commend the g…

This app records everyone you have been in contact with for more than 15 minutes and there is no timeframe as to when the government will stop needing it. There is no evidence a vaccine will ever exist, which means the government will want people to use this application potentially forever.

This is authoritarianism plain and simple. The government's solution to the virus is to track everybody, all the time. This is the path governments have been going down for a long time, and I personally am sick of it. I don't want them to know where I am, who I associate with, or anything else. They have already encroached too far into my life. Way too far.

Your company is also terrible and barely even hires Australian workers. You and your company represent a lot of what I hate about the path the world has gone down. For anyone who wonders why people use JIRA, despite it being a pile of garbage - it isn't for developers, it is for managers to enable them to micromanage you and show upper managers the reports. I can see why you would love this tracking software, you will probably get asked to analyse the data. JIRA on a global scale.

Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#62

Post by metta2uall »

mcannon wrote: post #35

I believe the government, PM and various ministers have said the code will be released. My sources also say exactly the same. They’re obviously operating with extreme urgency to get the app out. For you. Give them a few weeks to clean up code and release it (which is very normal) - but in the meantime, here are some tips: - Turn the HN angry mob mode off - it’s not helpful. We’re all in this together. - Commend the g…

IMHO, the fact that they app is unobfuscated and can thus be easily decompiled is even better than released source code since one can't be sure that the released source code truly matches the actual build in the app store (unless they also go to the effort of having 'reproducible builds' - which would be quite impressive).

Also it's good to keep in perspective that the 'government' can already track people to a great extent, e.g. via cell towers and face recognition.

Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#63

Post by hyperpallium »

aapeli wrote: post #39

It's called dual licensing. The Au Gov got the code for TraceTogether (what OpenTrace, the open source implementation of BlueTrace is based on) weeks before the source was publicly released as GPL.

Not disputing, but do you have a link for when they got source?

Opentrace was open sourced 16 days ago https://github.com/opentrace-community/opentrace-android

Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#64

Post by aapeli »

hyperpallium wrote: post #63
aapeli wrote: post #39

It's called dual licensing. The Au Gov got the code for TraceTogether (what OpenTrace, the open source implementation of BlueTrace is based on) weeks before the source was publicly released as GPL.

Not disputing, but do you have a link for when they got source? Opentrace was open sourced 16 days ago https://github.com/opentrace-community/opentrace-android

Don't have a public source, sorry.

Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#66

Post by lysp »

NewLogic wrote: post #48
mcannon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that on iOS it doesn’t even ask for location, and on Android that’s required for Bluetooth? The source code will show you what is done with that (as others who have decompiled it already have shown it doesn’t use the location anywhere). You can choose to get the virus - but that’s a pretty silly choice IMHO. And if you do, please stay home and don’t give it to anyone else.

This is more a stand on principles against governments rather than if the app is actually malicious in nature. People are rightly making a stand that a project of this nature should require at the bare minimum for source code to release concurrently with protection laws. Blame successive governments if individuals aren't overly welcoming to putting their blind faith in promises of a government that has let them down…

Exactly this.

The Aus Gov - especially the current one is massively lacking in trust.

Encryption laws, metadata laws. Scope creep on metadata access (ie local councils, horse racing bodies). Lack of transparent reporting when these laws are in use.

Raids on journalists.

Not to mention their lack of transparency over bushfires, sports grants, angus taylor's family connections with mining / paying $90m? for water to associated company. Ministers failing to declare gifts granted by airlines because they fell into previous parliament and not current one. Climate change vs mining interests. Loading the grid management team so they simply push renewables down the road instead of taking action to get wind/solar take up.

Marking spin vs real substance in every single press conference from all the top federal ministers.

The PM waiting for states to take charge of quarantine measures so he didn't get the blame for bringing those in (and get bad PR) early in the covid-19 crisis before we knew how bad it was. School closures. Ruby Princess.

So after all that they want to trust us with an privacy breaching app because it's the right thing to do?

I wouldn't install a hello-world built by current government even if my life depended on it.

Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#67

Post by NewLogic »

lysp wrote: post #66
NewLogic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more a stand on principles against governments rather than if the app is actually malicious in nature. People are rightly making a stand that a project of this nature should require at the bare minimum for source code to release concurrently with protection laws. Blame successive governments if individuals aren't overly welcoming to putting their blind faith in promises of a government that has let them down…

Exactly this. The Aus Gov - especially the current one is massively lacking in trust. Encryption laws, metadata laws. Scope creep on metadata access (ie local councils, horse racing bodies). Lack of transparent reporting when these laws are in use. Raids on journalists. Not to mention their lack of transparency over bushfires, sports grants, angus taylor's family connections with mining / paying $90m? for water to as…

To put it in words they will understand "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"

Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#68

Post by [deleted] »

mcannon wrote: post #42
bad_user wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily deny location data to games and people that are concerned about these apps will not share their location lightly. I have no app on my iPhone with the ability to use my location in the background, not even Waze or Google Maps. Also I don't care about deletion policies. That data should not be collected in the first place. I don't know about any specifics, but if the data isn't anonymized somehow, on the…

Did you know that on iOS it doesn’t even ask for location, and on Android that’s required for Bluetooth? The source code will show you what is done with that (as others who have decompiled it already have shown it doesn’t use the location anywhere). You can choose to get the virus - but that’s a pretty silly choice IMHO. And if you do, please stay home and don’t give it to anyone else.

[deleted]

Re: Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app

#69

Post by edav »

mcannon wrote: post #35

I believe the government, PM and various ministers have said the code will be released. My sources also say exactly the same. They’re obviously operating with extreme urgency to get the app out. For you. Give them a few weeks to clean up code and release it (which is very normal) - but in the meantime, here are some tips: - Turn the HN angry mob mode off - it’s not helpful. We’re all in this together. - Commend the g…

I am no expert but I have two points relating to concerns about data security / privacy - well food for thought:

Our existing medicare data - have we thought about where's it stored? Many make health claims through the Medicare app also. It tracks way more about our health (who we visited, when, what for, pathology tests and more etc.) than this app ever will. I'd bet it's stored on something like AWS also as until recently it was pretty much the only public cloud provider with the necessary PROTECTED certifications in Australia.

I understand mobile phones track our location even if you have zero apps installed and / or location services off. It does this via triangulation off the cell phone towers. If you know the IP address of a mobile device you can put it into any number of publically-available websites and in many cases you can find its general location - and sometimes with a fair degree of accuracy.

If these are concerns for us we are best to discard all our devices asap!

So to me this app seems to track nothing much new at all - it just seems to join a couple of important and potentially life-saving dots.

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