This is a good thread explaining why the app might be useful https://twitter.com/peripatetical/status/1254351060891627520

I agree with Allen's points by and large. Especially where he points out that the app is adjunctive to bootleather contact tracing, rather than a replacement for it.

I've highlighted a number of times the potential other benefits of traditional contact tracing. It's an opportunity for addressing the very significant anxiety around COVID and reinforce public health messages personally.

Aside from the fact that Apple users will have to have the app front and centre (so it won't work when you're on the phone, or browsing the Web). I've seen some suggest this means Bluetooth audio is out.

The govt has been very keen to point out that all data remains on your phone (until it doesn't) and that it's securely encrypted.

This is the same govt that's spent the last two years telling us that encryption is a grave threat to our national security and a tool for terrorists and paedophile.

So when they've passed laws requiring app developers to allow circumvention of encryption (and criminalised disclosure of these vulnerabilities), how are we supposed to trust that they don't mean this encryption?

Sorry, Malxoln, but it doesn't work that way. The laws of maths apply equally to COVID cases as they do to terrorists

The Australian government is deeply inimical to the principle of your data being secure and single purpose (see: AABill, Data retention, Data use and access, Robodebt).

We have no statutory right to privacy, but they assure us that -this time- everything will be fine

Australians have very weak statutory privacy protection, but Minister Hunt tells us there's nothing to worry about, because people misusing our data is illegal.

Good thing that prevents all problems, right?

The WA CCC found a "startling" data breach that compromised the home addresses of all WA police just last week.

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-23/ccc-report-reveals-auditor-accessed-wa-police-officer-details/12176944

That was against the privacy act.

It's also quite likely that some of the reporting of cases in the media has been from leaks from health care workers in hospitals or in "state public health teams", so also though this should be a protection, there is human nature to contend with.

Government and Healthcare workers aside, there are security risks associated with open Bluetooth, including viruses delivered without any user intervention

Some shopping centres embed Bluetooth beacons in their ad stands so they can track your engagement with advertising (this is the same technology the covid app uses)

This has been a very long thread of potential issues, but for me the major issue is that the Australian government has comprehensively proven itself to be totally unable to effectively implement major IT projects.

Many (but not all) of these issues have work arounds that would be sensibly expected in a well designed IT implementation.

But any objective assessment of the Government's task record in IT project implementation couldn't possible expect competence

In addition to the baseline level of Benny-Hill style government IT incompetence, this project has been implemented in a terrible hurry.

What could possibly go wrong?

So to conclude, everything in Allen's thread is true.

But the app has risks as well as benefits.

I'm not convinced that the benefits (especially if uptake is poor) justify these risks.

You should make your own decision.