And the government wonders why people were sceptical of the CovidSafe rollout (besides the very real safety concerns). It seems the CovidSafe rollout is flawed, with the discovery that the iOS version doesn’t even work properly.
Software developer Joshua Byrd recently posted his findings on Twitter and they’re pretty damning. Basically, the app will only ever work in the foreground with the screen on for iOS users.
On a technical level as explained in further Tweets, the phone will not broadcast UUID’s unless it is open. Coincidentally, the same issue was reported with Singapore’s app which CovidSafe is based upon and seemingly, nobody learned their lesson from.
Basically, unless you are aware of the power saving mode which just makes you leave the app open in your pocket upside down meaning you can’t use any other apps, the app itself is useless for a majority of iOS users.
Apple and Google have been working on their own OS level contact tracing API’s and presumably, it would be in the interest of the Australian government to migrate over to these API’s asap. Not only from a technical perspective, but also to alleviate privacy concerns users have over the app being used in the future as a surveillance tool.
