Android's misleading permissions cause issues with the Corona app. To have BT access you need to grant location permission (on older devices). People are rightfully sceptical for location tracking with a government app.
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Direct Bluetooth scan access lets an app determine location by detecting Bluetooth devices with known locations including beacons placed specifically for the purpose of tracking throughout stores, etc. Permissions are for high-level semantic concepts.
developer.android.com/guide/topics/c.
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> Your app needs this permission because a Bluetooth scan can be used to gather information about the location of the user. This information may come from the user's own devices, as well as Bluetooth beacons in use at locations such as shops and transit facilities.
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> Alternatively, on devices running Android 8.0 (API level 26) and higher, you can use the CompanionDeviceManager to perform a scan of nearby companion devices on behalf of your app without requiring the location permission. For more on this option, see Companion device pairing.
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The location permission wouldn't work if apps could just look at nearby cell towers, Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices without the permission. Being able to detect nearby Bluetooth devices allows location tracking. These apps COULD use Bluetooth scanning to track users...
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The Bluetooth permission is a low-level implementation detail. The user-facing permission is the Location permission because that's the personal information given to the app from direct Bluetooth access. It's avoided for normal use cases via pairing: developer.android.com/guide/topics/c.
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Play Services scanning nearby devices should require it to have location access. If Play Services was just a core part of the OS instead of a privileged app, they could hide this as an implementation detail. Reality though is that contact tracing IS a form of location tracking.
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The app needs to be granted access to use the Play Services contact tracing API. Play Services needs to have location access to scan nearby, which it does by default. The app needs location to be enabled for the device. It's not requesting location access. If the user already...
... has location enabled for the device, they're only going to see a prompt about contact tracing access. The reason they need to enable location access for the device is because Play Services is doing a form of location tracking but then only providing the app with limited info.