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Open Source Linux

Source Code of Covid Tracker Ireland App Goes Global With Linux Project (siliconrepublic.com) 30

The Linux Foundation Public Health initiative has chosen the Covid Tracker Ireland app as one of its first two open-source Covid-19 projects. From a report: Since its launch, more than 1.3m people have downloaded the Covid Tracker Ireland app, which was developed to help track the future spread of the coronavirus. Now, the app has been chosen as one of the first two open-source contact-tracing projects by the newly established Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) initiative. Nearform, the Waterford-based company that developed the app with the HSE, has been made one of the initiative's seven premium members, along with Cisco, Doc.ai, Geometer, IBM, Tencent and VMware. Under the project name 'Covid Green', the source code of the Irish app is being made available for other public health authorities and their developers across the world to use and customise. As part of the agreement, Nearform will manage the source code repository on GitHub. In its announcement, the LFPH pointed to the "extraordinarily high" adoption rate of the Covid Tracker Ireland app.
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Source Code of Covid Tracker Ireland App Goes Global With Linux Project

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  • I have it on my phone and and it is a very well designed and user friendly application. This is doubly impressive considering it was knocked out in the space of 4 months and is live and in use by a million people.
  • I like the idea but I'm concerned about the privacy implications. What rights do we have to privacy with these apps?

    • by radaos ( 540979 )
      You could just look it up. It has to comply with GDPR. https://covidtracker.gov.ie/pr... [covidtracker.gov.ie]

      The app:
      does not collect your name, age or address
      does not hold your phone number unless you choose to share it
      cannot be used to track your location
      cannot be used to check if you should be self-isolating
      can only access information on your phone that you choose to allow
      cannot be used to identify your close contacts
      cannot be used to identify people who have tested positive for coronavi
      • If it can't track location, just what the fuck is it sending to the central server?

        How does it know who you've had contact with?

        If it's a contact tracker that "can't identify close contacts" then just what the hell is it doing?

        • by radaos ( 540979 )
          The point is: It cannot be used [by anyone] to track _your_ location. Of course it uses GPS.
          Anonymized location data is used by the system to send you an alert when you have been in proximity to someone, also anonymous, who tested positive.
          • It cannot be used [by anyone] to track _your_ location

            Just the central authority. of course. And the admins in charge of IT at the central authority. All those who can bribe the admins. Cops with warrants. Hackers. Criminals, and HOLY SHIT have you thought about the security aspect of this AT ALL?

            Anonymized LOCATION data? How does that work? Most anonymized data [techcrunch.com] is bullshit. Location though? Double bullshit. If it sends location data, it needs to at the very least know the location of other people in the same location. So the location is... what? the g

  • by Zoxed ( 676559 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @12:33PM (#60311329) Homepage

    https://github.com/corona-warn... [github.com]

    @BoJo this will get you started...

    • sorry, solving the wrong problem. In IT it's important to define your problem correctly. You are starting with

      how can I stop people from spreading around the coronavirus and destroying my country and its economy? Whilst I'm at it I'd like people's lives to be private

      For which this app would be a solution. The correct problem definition, though is:

      How can I transfer tens of billions of pounds into the pockets of my friends whilst ensuring that those friends companies can build up databases of the citiz

  • Nice app, but it came too late to be useful. The disease already ran its course in Ireland. The daily death rate is near zero not only in Ireland, but everywhere in Europe. There are more important things to worry about now than Covid19.
    • by Jahta ( 1141213 )

      Not really. The numbers are in a good place, at the moment. But Covid-19 hasn't gone away. In the UK the Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently claimed that the country will be back to normal by Christmas. But his own senior health advisors quickly contradicted him [independent.co.uk], pointing out that it's critical to maintain the defensive measures like social distancing, contact tracing, and follow-up testing to avoid a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

    • The main purpose of the app is the keep the virus at bay. Yes, we've done a great job in getting the numbers down. We now need to keep them that way.

      That's what the app will do.

  • ...made their app open-source months ago: https://github.com/immuni-app [github.com]

  • The official Swiss app "SwissCovid" is also on github:

    https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-... [github.com]
    https://github.com/DP-3T/docum... [github.com]
    etc.

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