It would be ironic if after weeks of passionate arguments on HN and other places about the technology and about finding the right balance between efficacy and privacy, the whole thing fails because people don't like the principle.
It would be ironic if after weeks of passionate arguments on HN and other places about the technology and about finding the right balance between efficacy and privacy, the whole thing fails because people don't like the principle.
I would have thought that this depends a lot on the nature of said "message".
It needs to be a personal decision based on evidence you make available to the individual.
For example - if you were to send a message like - here is a photo of you on a bus, this person sitting next to you has tested positive, you sat next to them for 25 minutes - then sure, people will likely take action based on that.
The Government sending a message saying "you need to stay indoors for 2 weeks now because computer said so" is just not compatible with most people's world view, of course that's going to be completely ignored, it's arbitrary house arrest.
It also doesn't help that the UK Government are acting like circus clowns, people are going to say things like "Boris told me to stay indoors, but I needed to test my eyesight[1]".
[1] https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/25/people-warned-not-test-eyesig...
Instead the policy seems to be a blanket "isolate for 14 days even if you subsequently get a negative test result" which I suspect will go down very poorly, especially when it won't tell you who you were potentially exposed to.
The other information comes from Lord Bethel's house of lords testimony and also from this blog: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/nhs-covid-19-app-security-... and things linked to from it.