-----
This weekly blog is to explore the news around the larger issues around Digital Health, data security, data privacy, AI / ML. technology, social media and related matters.
I will also try to highlight ADHA Propaganda when I come upon it.
Just so we keep count, the latest Notes from the ADHA Board are still dated 6 December, 2018! How pathetic is that for transparency? Secrecy unconstrained!
Note: Appearance here is not to suggest I see any credibility or value in what follows. I will leave it to the reader to decide what is worthwhile and what is not! The point is to let people know what is being said / published that I have come upon.
-----
Government warns of social media manipulation as TikTok faces backlash
By Cara Waters
July 12, 2020 — 12.00am
The government has warned of the manipulation of information on social media platforms as viral video app TikTok faces a global backlash over security concerns.
Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, the mobile app has come under increased scrutiny in Australia after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week said he was looking at banning it over data and national security concerns following a similar ban in India.
TikTok has an estimated 1.6 million users in Australia who log on to upload and watch 15-second videos of users lip syncing and dancing.
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald asked Attorney-General and acting Home Affairs Minister, Christian Porter about security concerns involving TikTok and he said the government was working to combat disinformation through social media.
-----
https://www.zdnet.com/article/robo-debt-minister-claims-the-government-is-not-built-for-refunds/
Robo-debt: Minister claims the government is not built for refunds
The federal government will begin issuing refunds next week, but in chunks due to tech restraints and only as individuals update their payment information.
By Asha Barbaschow | July 7, 2020 -- 07:08 GMT (17:08 AEST) | Topic: Innovation
With the federal government in May admitting its bungled robo-debt scheme incorrectly issued 470,000 debts to those in receipt of welfare, Services Australia has been gearing up to refund around AU$721 million to Australians.
But it isn't as easy as pressing a refund button, Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert said on Tuesday.
"The government is not geared to do refunds, it doesn't have a system for it, so we've actually built out that system," he said.
He said Services Australia is waiting for Centrelink customers that were a victim of the Online Compliance Intervention (OCI) program to update their details.
-----
A chance to get smarter in cyber space of intelligence
In mid-November last year, WeChat users in China started discussing a new virus spreading in Wuhan.
Words and phrases such as SARS, coronavirus, novel coronavirus, Feidian (the Chinese equivalent of SARS), shortness of breath, dyspnoea and diarrhoea all began to increase in use across China’s most popular messaging app. As the virus spread, volunteer open-source researchers in China began collecting and archiving online material, including through GitHub, a Microsoft-owned coding and collaboration platform, to protect and preserve information at risk from China’s internet censors. Later, some of these open-source researchers, web archivists and citizen journalists would be detained, their online projects shut down.
We will never know how many governments were monitoring and collecting these early signs of COVID-19, and we will hear only snippets about what they found. Like advice from public health agencies and diplomatic cables, intelligence provides another source of information for governments. And for those intelligence agencies that pivoted quickly as the virus spread around the world early this year, online open-source collection, including data scraped from Chinese social media networks, blogs and archived databases, had the potential to alert them to the seriousness of what was to come.
-----
TikTok's data collection a worry, regardless of nationality
By Tim Biggs
July 11, 2020 — 12.01am
Chinese social media sensation TikTok is a unique platform when it comes to the risks it poses to user privacy and security, with experts saying that while its data collection policies are not that different from Facebook’s, TikTok’s focus on video warrants extra scrutiny.
Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland, associate dean for computing and security at Edith Cowan University, says the volume of video content collected, indexed and processed by TikTok separates it from other services and potentially opens the door to new kinds of threats to users.
There are concerns the popular app TikTok is posing a threat to national security.
"How long before we're able to extract a fingerprint because the image happens to include the closeup of someone's hand, whilst they're doing a particular act or dance on a TikTok meme," he says, adding that the high-quality video paired with passwords or other sensitive user data could be weaponised to create new kinds of extortion and cyber attacks.
-----
'Beyond the pale': ASIO boss rejects comparisons with HK security law
By Anthony Galloway
July 10, 2020 — 2.25pm
The nation's domestic spy chief says he is offended by a Law Council of Australia comparison between aspects of a bill giving his organisation expanded questioning powers and China's national security law imposed on Hong Kong.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation boss Mike Burgess also revealed his agency had active counter-terrorism investigations under way involving children as young as 14 as he argued the case for expanded powers to compulsorily question foreign spies and minors.
Under the bill, ASIO's compulsory questioning powers would be expanded from just terrorism-related threats to cover espionage, foreign interference and politically motivated violence. The age at which ASIO could compulsorily question a minor would be reduced from 16 to 14 if they were suspected of planning a politically motivated attack.
Appearing before the parliamentary inquiry scrutinising the proposed laws on Friday, the Law Council's David Neal suggested the power to compulsorily question people suspected of planning politically motivated violence could be broader in scope than China's law.
-----
New single unit of study emphasises the importance of data in health care
Jul9 2020
The Australian College of Nursing (ACN) is proud to offer our Understanding Data in Health Care Single Unit of Study (SUS) with support from The Australian Digital Health Agency.
Clinical communication and data science are dependent on the existence of accurate and organised data. As the role of technology continues to expand in health settings, it is more important than ever to ensure nurses are properly equipped with the knowledge and skills to utilize digital health to improve patient outcomes.
With this in mind, the SUS introduces students to the paradigm of data in the digital age and the principles of appropriate data collection, storage and usage. It also covers how data impacts on patients’ rights and the ethical and legal requirements related to organisational duty of care.
The SUS, which is now open for enrollment, can be used as an elective in ACN’s Graduate Certificate courses in:
- Acute Care Nursing
- Community & Primary Health Care Nursing
- Cancer Nursing
- Orthopaedic Nursing
- Paediatric Nursing
- Perioperative Nursing.
This is a great chance for you to upskill and improve your digital literacy, no matter what setting you work in!
You can view more information, including content themes, fees and enrollment, on our website
-----
TikTok is start of clipboard horror story
Chris Griffith 10 July, 2020
There’s a snowballing story about apps that copy your phone or tablet clipboard contents and it begins with TikTok.
TikTok, which collects data about its users using mechanisms such as challenges and surveys, late last month was outed specifically over copying information from the clipboard of users phones and tablets. It’s not the only app that does this. According to reports, about 50 have been outed so far. But this was the first and more are likely to follow shortly.
This is serious. Whenever you copy and paste data using the regular copy/paste, it goes via the clipboard which stores data temporarily that we move between applications. There are many circumstances when we might hold very confidential information in the clipboard.
For example, you might write a very confidential and explosive letter in Word, then copy and paste it into a secure encrypted email service such as ProtonMail or Tutanova thinking your correspondence is totally safe, omitting to think that your letter could have been nicked from the clipboard. You might never remember your credit card number, so you copy and paste it via the clipboard onto payment sites. Some cloud-based password safes will conveniently insert your login/password into a login screen by first copying them into the clipboard and pasting them onto a website. The clipboard can store lots of highly sensitive information.
-----
Encryption powers need to be ticked off by retired judge, national security watchdog finds
By Anthony Galloway
July 9, 2020 — 5.07pm
The national security legislation watchdog wants security agencies to have to go before a retired judge to get permission to access encrypted messages under a proposed overhaul of controversial laws.
The encryption-busting powers would also be extended to state, territory and federal corruption watchdogs - including the proposed new Commonwealth Integrity Commission - as part of the proposal.
The Morrison government on Thursday released the now former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor James Renwick's long-running review into the encryption laws, which were hurriedly passed by Federal Parliament at the end of 2018.
Dr Renwick, who took more than a year to complete the review and finished up his term on June 30, handed down his report last month.
-----
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/pandemic-shows-up-digital-divide-20200709-p55alj
Pandemic shows up digital divide
Digital transformation has taken on greater urgency because of COVID-19 as consumers have changed behaviour and companies have been forced to keep pace.
Jul 10, 2020 – 12.00am
Telstra chief executive Andy Penn says Australia has made more progress in the last three months in becoming a digital economy than in the previous five years.
The technology was always there to digitise the economy but Penn says people were held back by their ability or willingness to use it.
His comments, in a speech to a virtual event organised by the Trans-Tasman Business Circle, came as Boston Consulting Group released a new study on how COVID is giving greater urgency to digital transformations.
BCG managing director and senior partner Stefan Mohr says digital has always been important to business but it is going to matter a lot more "because through the crisis the paradigms that have limited us have shifted rapidly".
-----
Australian privacy watchdog launches investigation into Clearview AI
By Justin Hendry on Jul 9, 2020 5:38PM
Teams up with UK's information commissioner.
Australia’s privacy watchdog will probe the personal information handling practices of Clearview AI after several policing agencies admitted to having used the controversial facial recognition tool.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) on Thursday opened a joint investigation into the software with the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The tool, which is targeted at law enforcement agencies, is capable of matching images with billions of others from across the internet, including social media, to find persons of interest.
As part of the probe, OAIC and its overseas counterpart will look at Clearview AI’s “use of ‘scraped’ data and biometrics of individuals”, as well as how it manages personal information more broadly.
-----
Thursday, 09 July 2020 12:16
Australian organisations ‘plagued’ by cybercriminal attacks
Australian organisations continued to be plagued by ransomware and malware attacks by cybercriminals, according to global cybersecurity firm Sophos.
According to Sophos, three quarters (74%) of Australian organisations experienced a public cloud security incident in the last year – including ransomware and other malware (73%), exposed data (30%), compromised accounts (28%), and cryptojacking (25%).
According to the State of Cloud Security 2020 from Sophos, European organisations suffered the lowest percentage of security incidents in the cloud, “an indicator that compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines are helping to protect organisations” from being compromised.
“India, on the other hand, fared the worst, with 93% of organisations being hit by an attack in the last year,” Sophos said.
-----
https://gcphn.org.au/bowel-screening-results-uploaded-to-the-my-health-record/
Bowel screening results uploaded to the My Health Record
Commencing on Monday 13 July 2020, participants in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (the Program) will have their bowel screening results uploaded to the My Health Record (MHR).
When accessing bowel screening results through the MHR, participants will see a copy of the results letter they will have received from Sonic following testing of their returned samples.
In 2019, the Program’s Participant Details form was revised for transition in November to the National Cancer Screening Register and includes a check box on the last page for participants to select if they do not wish their bowel screening results to be uploaded to the MHR. If participants do not have one of the new Participant Details form, they can handwrite on their form ‘Do not send reports to My Health Record’.
-----
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2020/07/08/covidfail-app/
6:00am, Jul 8, 2020 Updated: 9:53pm, Jul 7
COVIDfail – the Australian coronavirus tracing app that can’t find anyone
The COVIDSafe app has many problems.
You might think that if a government spent millions of dollars on an app designed to help identify people exposed to the coronavirus they’d make sure it actually worked.
What has emerged is that our COVIDSafe tracing app was launched before it had been properly tested.
Worse still, the people charged with building the app apparently knew it wasn’t compatible with an iPhone, which is the single most popular mobile device.
It also became obvious that it doesn’t much like iPhones talking to Android devices, either.
-----
Social media giants block release of data to Hong Kong authorities
· The Wall Street Journal
Google, Facebook and Twitter are among tech companies that have suspended processing requests for user data from Hong Kong law enforcement agencies following China’s imposition of a national security law on the city.
“We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and support the right of people to express themselves without fear for their safety or other repercussions,” a Facebook spokeswoman said on Tuesday (AEST).
Earlier, a spokeswoman for Facebook-owned WhatsApp said reviews would be paused “pending further assessment of the impact of the national security law, including formal human rights due diligence and consultations with human rights experts”.
Twitter and Google said they paused all data and information requests from Hong Kong authorities immediately when the law went into effect last week.
-----
TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp wedged between superpowers
By Eryk Bagshaw and Zoe Samios
July 7, 2020 — 6.04pm
The world's largest social media companies have found themselves in the middle of a tit-for-tat escalation over the future of Hong Kong, as Facebook, WhatsApp and Google refuse to disclose information to the Chinese government and the United States threatens to ban Beijing-based TikTok.
TikTok announced it would stop operations in Hong Kong on Tuesday less than an hour after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was looking at banning the Chinese social media app over data and national security concerns.
TikTok, which has 1.6 million Australian users, maintains the decision was due to Hong Kong's new national security laws, which would have compelled it to hand the information of pro-democracy protesters to the Chinese government.
-----
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2020/more-government-data-to-be-hosted-in-australia.html
More government data to be hosted in Australia
New focus on data sovereignty.
By Casey Tonkin on Jul 07 2020 10:43 AM
The sensitive information of Australians should only be hosted on Australian servers, the government will announce today.
Government Services Minister, Stuart Robert, will announce the intention for more data sovereignty in a speech to the National Press Club today.
“We are examining the sovereignty requirements that should apply to certain data sets held by government, in addition to the existing Protected Security Policy Framework," Robert will say, according to an advance copy of his speech.
"This will include considering whether certain data sets of concern to the public should be declared sovereign data sets and should only be hosted in Australia, in an accredited Australian data centre, across Australian networks and only accessed by the Australian government and our Australian service providers."
-----
https://chf.org.au/publications/consumers-health-forum-electronic-prescriptions
Consumers Health Forum Electronic Prescriptions
Resource:
Consumers Health Forum Electronic Prescriptions (1.7 MB pdf)
Publication type:
Publish date: Monday, July 6, 2020
Author: Australian Digital Health Agency
Topics:
-----
https://www.ddwmphn.com.au/news/covid-19-gp-alert-6-july-2020
Bowel Screening Results and the My Health Record
Commencing
on Monday 13 July 2020, participants in the National Bowel Cancer Screening
Program (the Program) will have their bowel screening results uploaded to the
My Health Record (MHR). Health would be grateful if you could communicate this
to Healthcare Providers in your local area.
The Department of Health has been working with the Program’s pathology service
provider, Sonic Healthcare (Sonic) and the Australian Digital Health Agency
(ADHA) to implement this latest initiative in results reporting. When accessing
bowel screening results through the MHR, participants will see a copy of the
results letter they will have received from Sonic following testing of their
returned samples.
Further information about MHR is available from www.myhealthrecord.gov.au
If you have any questions, please contact us at NBCSP@health.gov.au
-----
Patient Fact Sheet: My Health Record
What is My Health Record?
A secure federal online summary of your health information, that either you and/or authorised healthcare providers involved in your care can access.
My Health Record is personally controlled, allowing you to control what goes into it and who can access it.
My Health Record in the Tasmanian Health Service
When you are treated in a Tasmanian Public Hospital, records relating to your care such as discharge summaries, medications and pathology or radiology reports may be uploaded to your My Health Record, if you have one. This is called ‘standing consent’.
These documents are not always uploaded while receiving treatment at a Tasmanian Public Hospital. This is because sometimes your clinician may use a paper-based process, or a system which hasn’t been connected to My Health Record yet.
Tasmanian Health Service clinicians can also choose not to send clinical documents to a My Health Record.
-----
When Facebook gets under your skin
Feeling angry, manipulated, distracted, fatigued, agitated and disgruntled after a lengthy session on Facebook?
July 7, 2020
Feeling angry, manipulated, distracted, fatigued, agitated and disgruntled after a lengthy session on Facebook?
You obviously access more than your friends’ and family’s snaps. Posts about divisive social and political issues, ignorant commentary, chain letters and blatant misinformation is likely near the top of your feed.
If you have hundreds of friends, you might receive copious posts about people you don’t necessarily care lots about, and less about those closer to your heart.
There’s the issue of concentration span. It’s easy on Facebook to be quickly distracted and embroiled in a new controversy seconds after being in another.
-----
https://www.afr.com/technology/paying-the-price-for-facebook-s-free-speech-20200626-p556mb
Paying the price for Facebook's 'free' speech
John Davidson Columnist
Jul 6, 2020 – 4.03pm
The latest efforts to limit the extent to which Facebook profits from hate speech and racially motivated violence appear to have got stuck on the same question that has vexed every other effort to bring big tech to heel.
How do you convince someone like Mark Zuckerberg that some prices are indeed too high to pay for free speech, when it's not them who is paying the price?
Last week, hundreds of American and multinational advertisers including Starbucks, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Levi Strauss, Adidas, Ford, Walgreens, Unilever and Hershey said they would stop advertising on Facebook for a month, unless the social media company did something about the hate speech and misinformation that is endemic on the social media platform, and that has contributed to social discord in Facebook's home country and elsewhere.
The boycott, which perhaps not coincidentally comes at a time when many advertisers are pulling back on their spend because of the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus (which, if social media is to be believed, is a hoax anyway), doesn't look as if it will bring about the change at Facebook that many have spent years hoping for.
-----
Monday, 06 July 2020 07:12
Australia's broadband network in a diabolical position after 'completion', says expert
An academic, who was part of the advisory panel for the NBN for the Labor Party, says Australia is now in a diabolical position as far as its broadband network goes, despite all the self-congratulatory rhetoric about how the network has been delivered on time and how it is holding up under the strain of extra traffic due to people working from home.
Rod Tucker, Laureate Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne and a member of Labor's Expert Panel that advised on the NBN, was responding to an invitation from iTWire to offer his views on the future of the NBN and what path an upgrade should take.
Two other experts, telco consultant Paul Budde and TransACT builder Robin Eckermann, have offered their opinions in recent days.
-----
https://www.6pr.com.au/are-medical-experts-using-my-health-record/
Are medical experts using My Health Record?
06 July, 2020
The digital platform for collective health information, My Health Record, is being used by 90 per cent of public hospitals and more services are signing up to add information according to the Australian Digital Health Agency.
Most pharmacies are using it to upload information about medication and GPs are also getting use out of it, interim CEO of Australian Digital Health Agency, Bettina McMahon told 6PR Breakfast.
Click PLAY to hear the full interview.
-----
http://medicalrepublic.com.au/medicare-pandemic-payments-keep-on-climbing/31048
6 July 2020
Medicare pandemic payments keep on climbing
COVID-19 General Practice Policy Telehealth
MBS data for May shows that payments for GP items have continued to rise, both month on month and compared with the past two years – thanks to more than half a billion dollars spent on telehealth.
The data shows enthusiastic take-up by patients of rebatable phone and video consultations, which are due to expire on 30 September but are in fact likely to be extended in some form yet to be determined.
An analysis by The Medical Republic of a selection of items in the latest Medicare statistics shows that overall GP billings have gone steadily up since the start of the year, with COVID-19 telehealth payments more than making up the shortfall in regular face-to-face GP attendances.
Billings for all these items totalled $667 million in May, $261 million of which was for telehealth. That’s up from $614 million (and $219 million) in April, and up from $643 million in May 2019.
-----
Comments more than welcome!
David.
17 comments:
COVIDfail - The big question to be asked here is "WHO" actually developed the APP?
"Boston Consulting Group is said to have been paid $885,000 and Amazon Web Services (Amazon) $710,000 for hosting the data collected."
How much data was collected?
What precisely was Boston Consulting Group paid for?
Tell me again "WHO actually developed the APP?
Was my understanding the DTA did the actual coding. Boston Consultancy don’t do devils, they do (like every other vanilla consultancy) do big data. That is a lot for AWS storage especially within preexisting Government dedicated data centres. Almost smell like someone was stupid enough to buy a VPC with some top end analytics tools. The latter cannot be right as the data was for contact tracing for states and territory health bodies.
A lot for a bit of cloud storage
This link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVIDSafe
implies that AWS developed the app, both the mobile and server components as well as hosting and support.
If you want to know the gory technical details start with this "The current state of COVIDSafe (mid-June 2020)"
https://github.com/vteague/contactTracing/blob/master/blog/2020-06-22OutstandingPrivacyIssues.md
There are links to earlier blog posts.
New single unit of study emphasises the importance of data in health care. I always cringe when I see anything to do with the ADHA telling others about good data practice. The internal information and data management is a joke at best. Sooner Rupert and Bettina are replaced the better. We need people who can run an organisation.
Hi Bernard, great link very interesting. I am somewhat puzzled with the Software Development being undertaken by AWS with seemingly no DTA involvement. This may prove to be an expensive arrangement. Would have been better to perhaps have waited and simply licensed the apple/google software. At least the burden and accountability for patching and performance would be better handled.
Extract from link provided by July 14 - 10:19PM.
The security of that centralised database is a serious concern. The DTA's COVIDSafe Test Plan recently provided to Parliament shows only a login and password to authenticate administrators (Attachment C Section 2.2.1.3 - Admin Portal). If administrator logins truly lack two-factor authentication, this directly contradicts the Australian Cybersecurity Centre's Essential Eight recommendations, and is not appropriate for such an important and sensitive database.
Seriously? No MFA!! that is such a standard out of the box AWS feature that only an idiot would not deploy it. How is it that this deployment was ever allowed to be released?
A lot of cyber security experts endorsed this crap online. Guess they become a list of those to avoid.
ADHA Staffer - this is not the first time I have heard this. Seems fitting the two who got the ADHA off to such a bad start should be there to screw up it natural transition to something else.
Regarding the story - Bowl Cancer results to be uploaded to MyHR. Having a dormant MyHR it does not effect me. However out of interest if a file is automatically sent to MyHR and there is no actual record what happens? I ask as it seems under visuals are suppose to tick a box to prevent. Is the sending system notified before it uploads? The specification are not clear and I do not believe MyHR is built to published specifications
COVIDSafe app slammed as a “$2 million failure”
https://themarketherald.com.au/covidsafe-app-slammed-as-a-2-million-failure-2020-07-14/
Recent Labor criticism of the Federal Government's COVIDSafe application has raised questions about how effective the tracing app really is.
Since the app was launched in late April, it has been downloaded roughly 6.6 million times. Of course, with the app being downloaded over two million times within one day of its launch, the months thereafter have shown a steady trickle of downloads after an initial surge.
Yesterday, Shadow Minister for Health Chris Bowen slammed the app as a "$2 million failure", telling Nine News the app has played no role in effectively finding anybody who has been exposed to the virus.
Opposition frontbencher and former Prime Minister Bill Shorten shared similar sentiments, telling Nine's Today Show Labor supported the app in principle, but it now looks like "an expensive dud".
The criticism comes after health officials revealed the app has had a limited role in tracing cases of the virus in the midst of the fresh outbreak in Victoria. The state has re-entered Stage Three lockdowns in certain areas after recording 1969 new COVID-19 cases since the start of July.
Why is COVIDSafe not helping?
From a functionality point of view, the app seems to be working as intended. The app uses Bluetooth to look for other devices with the app installed then create a "digital handshake" with that device. The app records how close the devices were together and stores the contact for 21 days. If one of the users then tests positive for COVID-19, the app can notify every other device that was nearby in the 21-day window of the potential threat.
The app works much in the same way as the tracing apps developed by tech giants Google and Apple.
One of the issues with COVIDSafe, however, is that Bluetooth firstly needs to be enabled for the app to function, and the app needs to have been opened to run in the background. This means if a user forgets to open the app in the morning, or turns off their phone's Bluetooth, the app is nullified. The app is designed to send a daily notification as a reminder to get it running, but this too can be turned off in settings or ignored.
Federal Minister for Health Greg Hunt and Minister said in late May a Victorian who had not been identified through the normal process was notified as being a close contact to someone with the virus through the COVIDSafe app and went into subsequent quarantine.
Is seems, then, that the issues with the app stem from community downloads — or lack thereof — rather than functionality issues. The Morrison Government outlined a target of 40 per cent of the population for total downloads when the app was launched. At 6.6 million, this is just over 26 per cent.
Victoria's Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, said yesterday the app has been a "very useful tool" for when people are moving around a lot and standing next to strangers. So far, however, no contacts have been identified solely through the app. Moreover, the health officer said the app will be less useful during Stage Three restrictions wherein people are locked down once more for the most part.
In New South Wales, where there has been a new outbreak at a pub in Sydney's south-west, the app hasn't found any new contacts that couldn't be found through manual tracing.
In Queensland and South Australia, health authorities reported that nobody diagnosed with the virus had downloaded the app, so its tracing capabilities were unused.
In Western Australia, there have been no community COVID-19 transmissions for several weeks, meaning the app is pointless; a good problem to have, to be sure, but not helpful when working out COVIDSafe's efficacy.
Still, it seems the Federal Government has no plans to dump the app, as the U.K. did with its own tracing app. As downloads steadily increase, hope is still being pinned on COVIDSafe to help stem the new spread.
It's rather sad really. The government cares so little about the truth that it is quite happy to put out propaganda that is so obviously a big fat lie.
Tik Tok influencers paid to promote COVIDSafe app falsely claim it 'traces everyone who tests positive'
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/tik-tok-influencers-fals-claims-covid-app/12459176
Ange McCormack and Avani Dias
Wednesday 15 July 2020 5:18pm
Advertisements and sponsored content for the COVIDSafe app being shared on Tik Tok are making false claims about the app's abilities to "trace everyone who has tested positive for COVID".
The videos frame the COVIDSafe app as the ticket for Australians to dodge a "second wave" of COVID-19 and get out of lockdown sooner.
The campaign, called Let Us Play, is being pushed by a coalition of sport and business leaders including Nathan Buckley, Caitlin Bassett, BUPA, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Mitchelton wines, among others. The ads and sponsored content on social media are not approved or paid for by the federal government.
One sponsored video for #letusplay on Tik Tok says, "I've figured out how to stop COVID: download the COVIDSafe app."
Another piece of sponsored content encourages young people to download the app so they can safely leave the house. The video also says the app "is absolutely amazing and it traces everyone who has tested positive for COVID."
The COVIDSafe app, which has been slammed by Labor this week as an expensive "dud", does not 'trace' positive cases of COVID-19 in Australia. The app is a tool to help health authorities conduct contact tracing, but is only of use if someone who has tested positive for coronavirus has downloaded the app.
Despite being downloaded over 6 million times, the app hasn't helped authorities find a single contact they hadn't already traced through manual methods.
18-year-old Nikita Kostoglou, an influencer from Queensland who has more than 200,000 followers on Tik Tok, was paid $600 to make a video encouraging Australians to download the COVIDSafe app.
Nikita, like a number of other influencers who spoke with Hack, wasn't aware that the campaign wasn't sponsored by the government, and didn't know which company was funding the campaign.
"They [our agent] just asked us to promote the app so there isn't a second wave and to get our generation of people to download the app," Nikita told Hack.
Representatives from Let Us Play have not responded to Hack's request for comment.
Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean of Computing and Security at Edith Cowan University, said it was unfortunate the app's abilities were being falsely spruiked to young people on social media.
"What's unfortunate in this case is that we're not getting the full picture [in these ads]. It's clear that the app isn't delivering in the scale of uptake or in the effectiveness of the app.
"Using influencers is one way to get to the younger market, but I think there has to be more clarity and honesty about the functionality of the app and ultimately how effective it's going to be."
COVIDSafe Tries to Indefinitely Connect to Every Device It's Handshaked Thanks to Yet Another Bug.
I am not convinced AWS is running the coding on this.
BCG gets another COVIDSafe contract
https://www.innovationaus.com/bcg-gets-another-covidsafe-contract/
InnovationAus
Denham Sadler, Senior Reporter
21 July 2020
Boston Consulting Group has now been paid more than $1 million for its work on the COVIDSafe app after receiving another contract extension, with the contact tracing app still yet to identify any new close contacts.
COVIDSafe was developed by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) after initial work was completed by the Department of Home Affairs. It is based on open source software built by the Singapore Government.
Boston Consulting Group was brought in by Home Affairs to work on the early-stages of the development of the Bluetooth-based app, and was awarded a $220,000 contract.
It then landed a $484,000 contract with the DTA when it took over responsibility for the development of the app.
This contract was originally signed to run for one month from April, but the global consultancy was granted an extension in late June worth a further $181,500.
It has now been given another extension, this one worth $143,880, and will work on the COVIDSafe project until at least 28 August.
The DTA’s contract with Boston Consulting Group for COVIDSafe is now worth $809,380 over four months.
Along with the Home Affairs contract, Boston Consulting Group has now been paid $1,029,380 for its work on the contract tracing app.
DTA chief executive Randall Brugeaud is a former Boston Consulting Group executive, working at the firm from 2008 to 2010, while ex-DTA chief strategy officer Anthony Vlasic left the agency to join Boston Consulting Group in February.
The development of COVIDSafe has now cost nearly $2.75 million in contractor fees alone. Substantially more has been spent on advertising of the app, and the government’s internal costs.
Other contractors on the app included Amazon Web Services, Shine Solutions and Ionize.
The federal government and private contractors opted to utilise the code from Singapore’s contact tracing app to develop COVIDSafe, which is based on a centralised model where close contact information is sent to a national database and then to state and territory tracers if a user is diagnosed with COVID-19.
Google and Apple have since offered their own model for digital contact tracing, with a decentralised architecture where no close contact data will leave a user’s device. This model is favoured by privacy advocates, while it would also likely improve the performance of the app on Apple devices.
While about 300 Australians diagnosed with the virus have had COVIDSafe downloaded on their smartphones, no new cases have been identified through the app who weren’t already identified to contact tracers by the individual.
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert recently said the lack of new contacts being identified by the app “simply means that Australian memories are actually working quite well”.
This led shadow government services minister Bill Shorten to go on the attack, slamming Mr Robert over his “twisted logic”.
“The $2 million app has been beset by problems particularly on locked iPhones and older phones, and there is not an IT expert in the country who says this app is doing its job,” Mr Shorten said last week.
“Let’s be clear: a virus tracing app is a good idea and we encourage the public to engage with the concept – but it must work and it must make a difference.”
“I’m glad Mr Robert agrees with me that pen and paper is currently our best tracing app. But that is not something, after much hype and spending $2 million of taxpayers’ money, the minister should be celebrating,” he said.
DTA chief executive Randall Brugeaud is a former Boston Consulting Group executive, working at the firm from 2008 to 2010, while ex-DTA chief strategy officer Anthony Vlasic left the agency to join Boston Consulting Group in February.
Well that seems all above the sprint board then.
... and which probably explains why they say they have no intention of adopting another, better design.
COVIDSafe app yet to trace useful number of unique cases despite second wave
https://www.smh.com.au/national/covidsafe-app-yet-to-trace-useful-number-of-unique-cases-despite-second-wave-20200725-p55fd7.html
By Nigel Gladstone
July 26, 2020
Experts say a technology U-turn is needed to help contact tracers in NSW and Victoria because there is "no chance" the COVIDSafe app is going to work as intended with its current settings.
Since April the multimillion-dollar COVIDSafe app has found just six connections in NSW not already identified by contract tracers, while in Victoria, where contact tracers are overwhelmed, it is yet to detect a contact that hadn't already been identified.
….(snip)
"If the COVIDSafe app was subject to Australian consumer law the government could be dragged into court for misleading and deceptive conduct," Mr Patrick said.
Labor's health spokesman, Chris Bowen, called the app a flop and said despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisting it was "our ticket to freedom", it was yet to perform as advertised.
"Despite downloads reaching the government's (amended) target, this week we saw the Prime Minister saying in areas of outbreak people haven't used the app, " Mr Bowen said.
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said the app was "working exactly as intended" with health officials using it more than 300 times to assist manual tracing.
"I think there are some real sovereignty issues with allowing Google and Apple to dictate terms and how to do COVID tracing," Mr Robert said.
The Government is open to improving technology on the basis that it maintains a key role for health officials but the current structure of the Google-Apple API does not do that, a spokesman for Mr Robert said.
"We will continue to work with Google and Apple, particularly to see if they can remove their barriers in allowing a sovereign tracing app - that has health professionals at its core - access to improved Bluetooth functionality," the spokesman said.
More than 6.7 million Australians have registered for the COVIDSafe app.
> "I think there are some real sovereignty issues with allowing Google and Apple to dictate terms and how to do COVID tracing," Mr Robert said"
where did they find this minister? What a disaster.
ScoMo, please find a minister who can at least pretend to address the actual issues. This is a pandemic, not some kindergarten game.
"I think there are some real sovereignty issues ...."
Like having the whole Federal Public service totally dependent on Microsoft and IBM and HP and the internet?
All those aged care residents are just not following the government's advice. They should have gone out and bought a smartphone and downloaded COVIDSafe.
Oh, I forgot, they can't go out. Who knew?
Post a Comment