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Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

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Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#91

Post by tgragnato »

catdog wrote: post #28
ThePhysicist wrote: post #10

The Luca app really is a complete train wreck. And what's worse is that the federal governments don't even have any direct control over the app itself, they just bought access to the contact tracing data for 12 months from the company operating the app. Meanwhile the company controls the app and all connected user accounts and can repurpose it in whichever way they see fit (and they already announced they have plans…

> I wasn't a big fan of the Covid tracing app in the beginning, but in retrospect the concept of that app seems miles ahead of the current situation with the Luca app. I think the concept behind is really solid and a great example for what is possible w/o invading privacy. The only problem is that development got very very slow after the initial release and a lot of potential was wasted. E.g. adding some kind of chec…

I only have positive things to say about our contact tracing application.

It’s open source https://github.com/immuni-app.

It’s simple: contact tracing only, easy for non technical people.

And has minimal tracking (I only see a periodic ping to get.immuni.gov.it)

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#92

Post by xwolfi »

andrew_v4 wrote: post #35
wyck wrote: post #29

There is so much incompetency in governmental IT/software decisions and software it's actually sad. Is it a product of smart people simply not working in this sector or corruption?. It seems from the outside to be filled with imbeciles masquerading as administrators. We need to somehow make the government way more accountable, if only there was an organization that could do that, we could call it the media.

It's actually "accountability" that's a big part of the problem. Government procurement is so focused on the appearance of fairness and money saving that all other goals, like actually getting something that works, take a back seat. You end up with over-specified requirements that remove the possibility of innovative or creative solutions. Providers are treated like a commodity, where it is assumed that all will do t…

In France, the tiny company I was in lost a lot of gov contracts to our absolute surprise since we felt we actually had a better solution for the price.

What we did to start winning was to make friends with the people judging us, offering free services making them personally look good until we started having such relations with them they d ask us out to frame the contracts and give them to us whatever our competitors would come up with.

It's impossible to take decisions based on surprise proposals in a public tender and it felt it was an open secret that tenders' winners MUST be decided before publication.

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#93

Post by GekkePrutser »

pizzapill wrote: post #73
black_puppydog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding as an outsider who has never been to the US is that the US hacker scene is quite different. One notable difference is a much closer connection to e.g. intelligence services. On the other hand, the relationship to democratic processes, as well as the stance on state/federal involvement in IT problem spaces, seems to differ between Germany and the US. Again: I'm an outsider and would actually like to h…

> One notable difference is a much closer connection to e.g. intelligence services. Some CCC hackers had a pretty good relationship with the Russian KGB. They got information about a wide range of US military secrets including details about the Space Defense Initiative (SDI). They were so successful that they wound up dead and a movie was made about them. Since then the CCC has to be heavily infiltrated by all kinds…

Yes the Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll recounts this story well.

However since then the CCC has been very honourable and I have nothing but respect for them.

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#94

Post by m463 »

wyck wrote: post #29

There is so much incompetency in governmental IT/software decisions and software it's actually sad. Is it a product of smart people simply not working in this sector or corruption?. It seems from the outside to be filled with imbeciles masquerading as administrators. We need to somehow make the government way more accountable, if only there was an organization that could do that, we could call it the media.

If you were a top computer person (software, security, IT, etc)... emphasis on top... would you want to work for a government? Would they value you?

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#95

Post by virbtb »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #60
wyck wrote: post #29

There is so much incompetency in governmental IT/software decisions and software it's actually sad. Is it a product of smart people simply not working in this sector or corruption?. It seems from the outside to be filled with imbeciles masquerading as administrators. We need to somehow make the government way more accountable, if only there was an organization that could do that, we could call it the media.

Politicians operate by building support and making money for their backers. If you are too efficient, and leave no crumbs, you will quickly lose support. Being a messy eater will get you much further. If you piss of enough tech billionaires, look no further than the last election to see what happens.

I have interacted with a level of the US DoD that is far removed from actual politicians. The situation there is closer to what others described: a pervasive, penny wise and pound foolish fear of being seen to spend money. It really affects everything: an entire professional workforce hired at well below market salary, wasted man-hours due to restrictions on equipment purchases, frequent reorgs to shuffle budgets around, etc. If this is anything like that, I bet they gave this to the cheapest bidder without consideration of much else.

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#96

Post by catdog »

qwertox wrote: post #66

This is a privacy issue, in the country which thinks so highly of the GDPR. So it's not something which they should be able to sweep under the rug as if nothing happened. As the article explains, the issue is far bigger than just vulnerabilities, it's about how politics supported this app. If this would be some other thing, like the implementation of a video surveillance system in the political center of Berlin, or a…

> This is as crazy as it gets and shows how incapable they are of controlling this pandemic, even how little they care to seriously work on it, and I wonder how much this represents what they have been doing over the last decade in general.

Fully agree, the whole "Merkel era" was an era of political stagnation. The pandemic relentlessly uncovered that.

But now we've reached a new low, German politicians seem completely unwilling to fight the pandemic anymore despite a 3. wave caused by the B.1.1.7 variant building up rapidly. It's crazy times, the luca app disaster is just one manifestation of it.

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#97

Post by Krasnol »

wyck wrote: post #29

There is so much incompetency in governmental IT/software decisions and software it's actually sad. Is it a product of smart people simply not working in this sector or corruption?. It seems from the outside to be filled with imbeciles masquerading as administrators. We need to somehow make the government way more accountable, if only there was an organization that could do that, we could call it the media.

I know one even worse: health IT.

The prices for crappy software/hardware solutions are mind boggling. I guess this is how it is if you just can afford it.

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#98

Post by wccrawford »

renewiltord wrote: post #64

Yeah, I knew this shit was gonna happen. I installed literally zero of these apps.

I like the idea of these apps, but none of them were advertised enough near me to think that others would be using them, so they were all pointless.

And of course, they were rushed out the door, so they'd probably have quite a few problems.

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#99

Post by 908B64B197 »

wyck wrote: post #29

There is so much incompetency in governmental IT/software decisions and software it's actually sad. Is it a product of smart people simply not working in this sector or corruption?. It seems from the outside to be filled with imbeciles masquerading as administrators. We need to somehow make the government way more accountable, if only there was an organization that could do that, we could call it the media.

> Is it a product of smart people simply not working in this sector or corruption?

Depends on the country/jurisdiction.

This reminds me of a story: college career fair is held in January. Government is there and takes resumes. Candidates start getting callbacks for government positions in late April.

Do I even have to explain that those still available late April for the summer maybe were not... the sharpest tools in the shed?

Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium

#100

Post by vbsteven »

Krasnol wrote: post #97
wyck wrote: post #29

There is so much incompetency in governmental IT/software decisions and software it's actually sad. Is it a product of smart people simply not working in this sector or corruption?. It seems from the outside to be filled with imbeciles masquerading as administrators. We need to somehow make the government way more accountable, if only there was an organization that could do that, we could call it the media.

I know one even worse: health IT. The prices for crappy software/hardware solutions are mind boggling. I guess this is how it is if you just can afford it.

Don’t forget that pretty much all software that touches medical data will have to go through various approval and regulatory processes. Which sometimes take up even more time than actually writing the software. Hence high costs in this industry.
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