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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

The Luca app really is a complete train wreck. And what's worse is that the federal governments don't even have any direct control over the app itself, they just bought access to the contact tracing data for 12 months from the company operating the app. Meanwhile the company controls the app and all connected user accounts and can repurpose it in whichever way they see fit (and they already announced they have plans for the app beyond the pandemic).

It's absolutely mind-boggling to me how our government(s) can get the idea to "rent" contact tracing data from a private company like this, it just reeks of corruption. I wasn't a big fan of the Covid tracing app in the beginning, but in retrospect the concept of that app seems miles ahead of the current situation with the Luca app.

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> I wasn't a big fan of the Covid tracing app in the beginning, but in retrospect the concept of that app seems miles ahead of the current situation with the Luca app.

I think the concept behind is really solid and a great example for what is possible w/o invading privacy. The only problem is that development got very very slow after the initial release and a lot of potential was wasted. E.g. adding some kind of check in feature was already discussed mid last year but it took them until now to pick that idea up.

I only have positive things to say about our contact tracing application.

It’s open source https://github.com/immuni-app.

It’s simple: contact tracing only, easy for non technical people.

And has minimal tracking (I only see a periodic ping to get.immuni.gov.it)

Yeah. Too bad nobody downloaded it

Immuni is the official contact tracing app for Italy with 10mm downloads.

Which is not "nobody", but it is not even close to the statistical threshold of "enough use, helps prevent the spread of the disease"

Globally yes, but the thing about contact tracing is that it is inherently local. So getting 1/6:th (if we assume most of those downloads are in Italy) of a single country would probably be helpful in preventing spread.

It means 1/36 interactions will be recorded by the app, which is almost certainly not enough to move the needle.

> I wasn't a big fan of the Covid tracing app in the beginning

Let this be a lesson. If you get something good and still keep complaining and complaining, then what you get in the end is something bad.

Yeah, just bow your head down like a good boy.

I don't think this is a lesson, at all.

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