Health department publishes check-in app, asks everyone to use it. Government promises records won't be otherwise used.
The difference being, that this isn't a government app here but one made by a private enterprise. And the official government app is provably privacy conscious (open source on Github).
This app has proven very useful in Germany, mostly due to it automating the mandatory paperwork required of restaurant and venue owners, who were required to gather contact information on patrons and log the time they spent in their businesses. The Luca app does this automatically and encrypts the info, protecting it from the prying eyes of malicious outsiders.
The app is very controversial here in Germany. It has proven useful in only a tiny fraction of cases (a few hundred out of hundreds of thousands). Also, the app's developers have repeatedly denied security flaws that exist(ed) in the app, only later to claim it's the first they've heard of it when exploits were demonstrated by security researchers (try #lucafail on Twitter).
The app was introduced in a very dubious fashion, too. Politicians jumped on the band waggon and paid millions in license fees (for one year) often because of the persistent lobbying by a certain well-known German hip hop artist. Now that the app has proven essentially ineffective, many German states terminate their contracts.
Another critical thing was the planned commercial exploitation of the user base that Luca accumulated. Developer-internal documents show that the planned commercialisation included, among others, ticket sales and entry to concert venues, which explains why said hip hop artist was so keen to invest in and lobby for them.
Lastly, there's a much better app for doing what Luca was supposed to do and that's the official Corona-Warn-App (CWA) of the German government. It can do all the same things and more. The difference is, it's open source, developed in the open (on Github), is privacy oriented in that it doesn't collect any personal data at all and does all tracing and alerting via the contact tracing framework that Apple and Google built (based on low-energy bluetooth beacons).
This may be Germany's first scandal related to misuse of COVID-tracking data. Hopefully, the public response to this news will help it to be its last.
No, it isn't. The police had used the paper contact lists that existed (and still exist) before digital check-ins became more common for investigative purposes. The rules were changed to prohibit that but it's still happening. That's the real scandal here.
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Re: Western Australia
The difference being, that this isn't a government app here but one made by a private enterprise. And the official government app is provably privacy conscious (open source on Github).
Correction
I cannot let this stand.
The app is very controversial here in Germany. It has proven useful in only a tiny fraction of cases (a few hundred out of hundreds of thousands). Also, the app's developers have repeatedly denied security flaws that exist(ed) in the app, only later to claim it's the first they've heard of it when exploits were demonstrated by security researchers (try #lucafail on Twitter).
The app was introduced in a very dubious fashion, too. Politicians jumped on the band waggon and paid millions in license fees (for one year) often because of the persistent lobbying by a certain well-known German hip hop artist. Now that the app has proven essentially ineffective, many German states terminate their contracts.
Another critical thing was the planned commercial exploitation of the user base that Luca accumulated. Developer-internal documents show that the planned commercialisation included, among others, ticket sales and entry to concert venues, which explains why said hip hop artist was so keen to invest in and lobby for them.
Lastly, there's a much better app for doing what Luca was supposed to do and that's the official Corona-Warn-App (CWA) of the German government. It can do all the same things and more. The difference is, it's open source, developed in the open (on Github), is privacy oriented in that it doesn't collect any personal data at all and does all tracing and alerting via the contact tracing framework that Apple and Google built (based on low-energy bluetooth beacons).
No, it isn't. The police had used the paper contact lists that existed (and still exist) before digital check-ins became more common for investigative purposes. The rules were changed to prohibit that but it's still happening. That's the real scandal here.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Cuboci.
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