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A comment on Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government's contact tracing app. Parent comment

Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by Daishiman on Sunday April 26, 2020 @03:09PM (#22989343)
The Australian government is not a single monolothic institution. It's a set of hundreds of thousands of people with different agendas and intentions. You cannot assign singular agency to the entire government; rather we have to go case-by-case to understand the implications of programs like these.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by roenxi on Sunday April 26, 2020 @07:01PM (#22991101)
That is a little like saying the human body isn't a single organism because, say, the digestive tract operates with its own agency and intention outside of conscious control. It isn't correct; the politicians in the government have a very high level of agency around what ends up being fed into the institutions and what agendas and intentions are allowed to rise to power.

This isn't the step that gets us to a dystopian future, but it is so cheap and convenient for government to take programs like this and expand them every single time there is a crisis that it may as well be assumed to be coming if people don't kick up a stink each and every time.

We don't need perfect safety. We've can't have perfect safety. Having perfect, technologically enforced safety will create systems that will become corrupted and evil with a high, high likelihood. I don't want the government to have the ability figure out who I'm talking too at all; I'd rather we went in the exact opposite direction of this app and put legal barriers in place to them even asking. COVID-19 is horrible, but it will pass. This tracking strategy will not.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by hilbert42 on Sunday April 26, 2020 @08:22PM (#22991657)
"I'd rather we went in the exact opposite direction of this app and put legal barriers in place to them even asking. COVID-19 is horrible, but it will pass. This tracking strategy will not.".

Absolutely damn correct brother! 10/10.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by cmroanirgo on Sunday April 26, 2020 @04:24PM (#22989917)
Yes. But it is the government that creates the law.

Parent also forgot to mention mandatory data retention laws. All isps must retain history of internet traffic for ¿2 years.

That telephone numbers are used in this app should also be regarded as a breach of the referendum we had about the Australia Card back in the 80's. (It is illegal to tie citizens to a number for the sake of tracking, which is exactly what this does...). Which is why scomo (Scott Morrison, the PM) is asking for this app to be voluntary.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by mickotron on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @02:59AM (#23004266)
This only matters if it's mandatory, which voting is in Australia. This app is voluntary. Whether it has passed or not yet, legislation is planned to make it illegal to force anyone to download or use it. So trying it to a phone number is ok if it's totally voluntary. Also because users are not identified by their phone number under normal circumstances, this is also ok. If someone steals or leaks the key used to encrypt/decrypt all TempIds for all users, or can figure out a pattern in the generation of future TempIds for users, they can possibly tie people to their phone number and identify them. However under normal use there is no way to identify someone, well unless they can snoop the broadcast/encounter json messages and get your device ID and toe that to you
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by driverdan on Sunday April 26, 2020 @05:31PM (#22990445)
That makes it worse. A well-intentioned, well-meaning government org could create something with proper privacy controls and then another part of the government with worse intentions could get their hands on the data.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by hilbert42 on Sunday April 26, 2020 @08:27PM (#22991686)
"A well-intentioned, well-meaning government org<...>"

Yuh, has there ever been one? If so where and when? (I've been around quite some years now and I've never seen one anywhere.)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by godelski on Monday April 27, 2020 @02:19AM (#22993345)
Never attribute to malice what can be just as easily attributed to stupidity. While there are clear bad actors, I do believe that many do think what they are doing is for the best. Few people are actually evil, most are just stupid. I'd consider that a win considering that we're chimps that are barely able to communicate with one another even when we speak the same language.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by Sophistifunk on Sunday April 26, 2020 @08:08PM (#22991549)
Bollocks. We can attribute to them the desire to gobble up power to control what we can and can't do on the internet and surveil us, because that's the way they all behave.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dissection of COVIDSafe (Android): Australian government'... by hilbert42 on Sunday April 26, 2020 @08:18PM (#22991624)
"The Australian government is not a single monolothic institution. It's a set of hundreds of thousands of people with different agendas and intentions."

Correct! Once we had two camps, you either voted for one or the other. That's all gone now, Identity Politics unfortunately killed the simple life off years ago.

[ Parent | on HN ]