The UMCA could certainly do with clarifying their requirements about live tracking. Something along the lines of "Must be visible to the public without individual access approvals, and must maintain a log of positions recorded." That would at least stop someone in the future making the mistake.
Either that or make the fee higher to include the rental of a SPOT tracker and year long tracking subscription with a deposit refunded upon return (with the appropriate discount for riders that provide their own).
No-one predicted the membership issue though, that's an interesting one.
But they clarified that in subsequent correspondence. They required a SPOT tracker. I'm not surprised they wouldn't accept Find My Friends as what are the chances his phone would keep charge throughout and it's reliant on a mobile signal. Like Miles it sounds like Bruce might be "technologically challenged".
Then why not put in the rules that a SPOT tracker is explicitly required? They asked for "Live Tracking" without specifics of what was required, they also said it must be in place at least two weeks before the record attempt was due to start but the correspondence released suggests Bruce was first told to get a SPOT tracker on December 30th.
(Obviously there must have been correspondence before 30th December as Bruce would have needed to apply in the first place, so it might have been covered there.)
Is it Bruce's fault for not ensuring the live tracking was acceptable before starting, or the UMCA's fault for not enforcing its rules early enough to give him fair warning? (Probably a combination of both...)
[EDIT]
Keeping things charged isn't a technology problem, it's a logisitical problem, and it applies to the recording device (Garmin) too, so no difference there. There are rules in place to deal with what happens when the tracking is lost, which ultimately ends up in a DQ if it proves too unreliable.
SPOT trackers aren't 100% reliable either, there are plenty of times where Steve and Kurt's trackers have missed a few updates (not just because they've turned them off at a stop!). Mobile coverage looks fine in Adelaide (and the roads he was using) and isn't really a problem in the UK, depending on your mobile network you're rarely out of signal for more than 10 minutes if you're cycling, which isn't much different from SPOT updates every 15 minutes. The lack of public access to the data, and the lack of logging, looked to be the problem and I'm surprised that couldn't be addressed with a different app, surely there is one out there that does both of those for cheap.