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I don’t even care if I’m wrong anymore, I just want to know the answer to this mystery!
UPDATE! Apple has emailed me back and said of The Sun “private API” story: “the Sun story is wrong and being corrected. There is no special API, no arrangement or special treatment.” The plot thickens!
One last update. Apple says that the NHS “100%” has to follow the same rules as every other app - and notes that the app has already been approved as is in the App Store. So either NHSX has done something pretty extraordinary (maybe!) OR the app contains a fairly massive flaw.
…And The Sun appears to have updated its story to remove any references to special functionality and background running. (Without flagging that the story has been updated…)https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11564646/coronavirus-tracing-app-phone-batteries-apple/ …
It seems odd- iPhones send data over bluetooth when locked in quite a few apps- eg in cars, when paired to a speaker streaming music, paired to an Apple Watch running exercise apps etc.
There’s fairly clear exceptions for some purposes such as those.
The Core Bluetooth API is a standard iOS API that supports background operation. I suspect what’s unusual here is that NHSx is using this to detect other phones running the app, rather than communicating with external Bluetooth devices. Apple isn’t providing any special access.
By ‘external devices’, I mean other than phones. Something like the Tile Bluetooth tracker device would be a more usual use case, and can be monitored in the background via the Tile app.
This is AMAZING
Going to retell this story one day in a long form investigative journalism podcast.
I suspect someone talked to the Sun journalist about the Apple/Google API that they're now looking to switch to (per FT) and wires got crossed.
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