Australian government rejects Apple/Google contact tracing model

But the government's contact tracing app has a success rate of less than 1%

Technology experts in Australia have criticised the government for the decision not to use Apple's and Google's contact tracing system model in the country's Covidsafe app, which is set to receive a crucial upgrade in coming days.

On Monday, Government Service Minister Stuart Robert announced that the Covidsafe app would include a new Bluetooth protocol called Herald, in an effort to improve performance and better identify individuals who come in close contact with Covid-19 patients.

Robert said that the code for the update would be made available via Github to "enable the tech community an opportunity to provide feedback ahead of the release to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store".

He added, "Australia's technology capability and contact tracing systems are world-leading and we will be the first country in the world to adopt the Herald Bluetooth protocol, which has been shown to significantly improve our capability through the Covidsafe App."

Experts, however, are doubtful about the performance of the overhauled app, saying it is unlikely to improve results in the absence of Apple and Google's contact tracing system.

Since the start of the pandemic earlier this year, many countries have rushed to create contact-tracing apps to help prevent the spread of the virus. However, these apps differ significantly in privacy and functionality.

Apple and Google's model has been adopted in many apps around the world, used to trace people coming in contact with Covid-positive individuals.

The Australian government launched its Covidsafe app in April. It has since been downloaded more than 7 million times. However, experts see it largely as a failure, considering its record of detecting just 17 positive cases out of more than 27,500 total cases in Australia.

In addition, Covidsafe has also been affected by a variety of software issues, and has struggled to perform efficiently while recording interactions between different mobile operating systems.

"I don't know whether this will improve interaction detection, it might do so a bit, but I'd be astounded if it improved recording of interactions as much as the Apple and Google option," Dr Vanessa Teague, a cryptography academic at the Australian National University , told the Guardian.

The Apple and Google model does not seek to create a central database of close contacts of confirmed cases. Dr Teague said this may be the reason why the Australian government appears more inclined to use the existing Covidsafe app framework instead.

A spokesman for Robert told Guardian Australia that the Apple/Google platform "offers less device compatibility compared to Covidsafe" and puts the health information of users in the hands of the private firms, which is not covered by the current privacy legislation.

Jim Mussared, a security researcher who discovered flaws in the Covidsafe app earlier this year, said there was no "conclusive" evidence to suggest that the use of Herald protocol would make in Covidsafe more effective than the app using Apple/Google system.

"Australia is continuing to do their own thing when so many other countries have seen the light and gone with the Apple-Google system," Mussared said.

While new Herald protocol appears to be better designed, the approach "is not designed to work in the first place, with our sophisticated way of tricking the operating system to do things you want," Mussared added.

"It's especially frustrating as Apple and Google have given us a way of solving this problem."