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ukhsa-collaboration / covid-19-app-android-ag-public

COVID19 Android app
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Support BLE beacons #26

Closed danjenkins closed 4 years ago

danjenkins commented 4 years ago

Supporting BLE beacons for collecting where a user has been ( as well as a QR code) would mean users wouldn't have to pull out their phone in order to scan a QR code, it could also mean you could track when the user leaves that area. From what I understand, the QR code contains all the information needed for the app to know it's details... and there's no round trip to "register" you (your BLE mac address) to that location, it's all done using the app locally. So if a location had a BLE beacon, and you were around that BLE beacon for a predetermined amount of time (lets say 2 minutes).. that means you weren't just walking past a shop.... you could then register that user as being there, without any interaction needed by the end user, and you also know when they left - not just assuming they were there until midnight.

This could be implemented for iOS too.

nhs-covid19 commented 4 years ago

Thanks for your interest in the NHS Covid-19 project. We do welcome product suggestions on the above link - https://faq.covid19.nhs.uk/create-case/ and endeavour to respond to technical issues here. On Android, discovery of BLE Beacons requires the BLUETOOTH_ADMIN permission to invoke the startScan() method (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/bluetooth/le/BluetoothLeScanner#startScan(java.util.List%3Candroid.bluetooth.le.ScanFilter%3E,%20android.bluetooth.le.ScanSettings,%20android.bluetooth.le.ScanCallback), which is explicitly forbidden in the Exposure Notifications Additional Terms (https://blog.google/documents/72/Exposure_Notifications_Service_Additional_Terms.pdf) - 3.c.i, and scanning fixed location beacons identifies the precise location of a user, which is also relevant to that clause - so it is currently unlikely that the application will support this technology.

danjenkins commented 4 years ago

Thanks @nhs-covid19 for the reasoning - I didn't know about that restriction and the clause that would stop that. Interesting considering how much easier it would be to actually track where someone was without the need for a QR code. Anyway, thanks!