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Comment by IneffablePigeon | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree - I came into it against the centralised model on principle but after reading their whitepaper I actually think the benefits may slightly outweigh the negatives.

The app has to actually work for a high enough proportion fo cases, though.

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Centralized models would be more palatable if the keys to the kingdom were stored with an NGO.

There's too much temptation for governments with poor privacy track records (and that's where they're even trying) to stick their hands in the cookie jar for other purposes.

If the government wants the data, an NGO offers almost no protection. The only safe choice is not to collect the data in the first place.

An NGO offers substantially more protection than a direct government store.

Whether that is enough protection is a fair debate.

And for it to work people need to trust it.

True, and I would not trust it if I had a phone that could run it. It's not trust in the app but in the government.

I recall some dickhead politician being asked about security of a centralised app, his response was "GDPR would take care of that". Because hackers care about that kind of thing.

Honestly this uk government is so bloody inept. When you want theresa may back, that tells you something.

The explanation of the trade offs by Ian Levy (Technical Director of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, not the UK MP with the same name) was actually very well put, but few newspapers over here in the UK even seem to have read it or deliberately ignored it.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/security-behind-nhs-contac...

I think part of the problem with it is that the beginning is a bit of a long winded intro, but the technical details later are really good.

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