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Corona warning app: government wants to gain public confidence with new measure - a politician expresses criticism

2020-05-06T20:09:25.655Z


Data protection experts had considerable concerns about the corona tracing app. The federal government is now planning a new measure to gain trust. A politician criticizes.


Data protection experts had considerable concerns about the corona tracing app. The federal government is now planning a new measure to gain trust. A politician criticizes.

  • In view of the corona virus pandemic * , governments are also using  apps as a countermeasure.
  • A point of contention was the location of the user data
  • The federal government is now taking a new measure to win the trust of the population.
  • The basic facts about the coronavirus * and the corona news from Germany * can be found here. Our map *  shows the current number of cases in Germany. These new corona rules should apply - an overview *.

Update from May 6, 10:02 p.m .: The Corona warning app of the federal government is still not ready for use - and is being hotly debated by the public, primarily because of concerns about data protection. Now the federal and state governments have agreed to make the source code of the app publicly available . In this way, the public's confidence in the application is to be strengthened. "The app is made available transparently  " Open Source " ", said a decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Ministers of the federal states. 

Government Corona Warning App: Use of the application remains voluntary

As soon as a widely applicable app is available, it will be important that large sections of the population use this opportunity to quickly find out when they have had contact with an infected person so that they can react quickly. "The federal and state governments will call for this," the paper says. 

It also emphasizes that the use of digital "contact tracking" is an important measure to support the quick and complete tracking of contacts . Nevertheless, the use of the app should be voluntary for the citizens . The German and European data protection rules would be strictly observed. Only epidemiologically relevant contacts of the past three weeks would be anonymized and saved only on the user's cell phone without recording the movement profile. 

Government Corona Warning App: Kretschmann Expresses Criticism - "Too Much Time Wasted"

The government's prudent approach to data protection should be positively received by experts and the general public. But that the Corona app from the federal government is still a long time coming , prompted criticism from Baden-Württemberg's Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) on Wednesday

He urges the federal government to introduce the planned app quickly. "We have already lost far too much time there, " complained Kretschmann on Wednesday in the state parliament in Stuttgart. He also emphasized that it would be “crucial” for the further fight against the spread of corona virus that large parts of the population use the app. 

Update from April 30, 3:02 p.m .: The German government has already commissioned Deutsche Telekom and SAP to develop a Corona warning app - but a group of other companies still has hopes of getting their project implemented. "We have a functional solution, " Rainer Bernnat from the management consultancy PWC Germany announced in an interview with the German press agency. 

Then Bernnat handed out to other companies, not specifically named, that the fact that his group had a functioning solution would distinguish the group from other providers whose stand "ranges from five colorful PowerPoint pages to a demo prototype". In addition to PWC Germany, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the company SIS Software founded out of it , and the ticket specialist Eventim are also participating in the Corona-Warn-App project .

Corona tracing app: Group develops its own application

The app will be available at the beginning of May and should be used internally by PWC Germany, among others. The interfaces for Corona apps announced by Google and Apple could be installed quickly, said SIS boss Tobias Franke. "This will be a very small effort, take out one component and insert a new component." 

The group's suggestion is to create conditions in Germany for using several compatible apps . This does not mean that there must also be a patchwork of different contact tracking systems, Paul Lukowicz from DFKI emphasized. In principle, you could have any number of apps that all cooperated with each other as long as the apps were based on technology and there was a uniform connection to health authorities. 

The Corona apps are designed to record which smartphones have come close to each other - and to warn users when it later becomes apparent that they have been next to infected people. 

Corona tracing app: Google and Apple are making progress in development

Update April 29, 19:38:  Google and Apple provide a first pre - version of its interface for the planned Corona - warning - Apps ready. Access to this will be given to selected app developers who work with health authorities, the US companies announced on Wednesday.

Google will release the beta version of the interfaces on its Google Play platform on Wednesday. Among other things, Apple has released a preliminary version of the iOS software with which the warning system should already work.

In the Apple and Google concept, the distance between smartphones is to be measured based on the Bluetooth signal strength. The smartphones are also Bluetooth crypto - key exchange, which change every 10 to 20 minutes. This should enable you to understand encounters without an individual being traceable. The comparison with keys of infected persons should only take place on the individual devices.

Corona tracing app: FDP politicians complain about wasted time by the federal government

Update of April 29, 2:36 p.m .: Manuel Höferlein (FDP) , chairman of the Bundestag's digital committee, expressed clear criticism of the federal government before a special meeting of the committee. "With the Corona app, the federal government is once again running mercilessly behind a digital project, " complained Höferlin. The members of the committee want to know from Minister of State Dorothee Bär (CSU) this Wednesday how the project will continue. 

The chairman further criticized that the government's unclear stance on a specific storage model allowed more valuable time to pass . After having decided on a decentralized model, Bär had to present a concrete schedule, Höferlein demanded. 

Corona tracing app of the federal government: FDP politicians would have commissioned start-ups

Now that the federal government has announced that it wants to develop the app together with Telekom and SAP , the question arises as to “why is it once again leaving out our innovative and agile start-up scene ,” Höferlin continued. After all, some start-ups had been working flat out on a finished solution for weeks - and mostly free of charge.

In the meantime, Telekom and SAP are being offered support in developing the corona tracing app . The international initiative , under the name h worked out a concept for a Corona-warning app PEPP PT at will, their know-how now the two companies commissioned by the federal government provide . The group of scientists, entrepreneurs and developers announced on Wednesday. 

In the past few weeks, a huge effort has been made to develop a European software architecture for country-specific corona contact tracing apps. "We continue to make our findings, test results and technical components available to everyone," the initiative said. 

Further easing in the Corona crisis is under discussion. A plan for opening the daycare center has now been drawn up. *

Corona tracing app of the federal government: Telekom and SAP should develop it

Update from April 28, 3:56 p.m .:  According to the Federal Government, the planned Corona app for the fight against the spread of infections is to be developed by Telekom and SAP and brought to market maturity. The basis should be a " decentralized software architecture ", as announced by the ministries for health, home affairs and the chancellery on Tuesday. The main task of the app is to inform citizens as soon as possible after contact with a person infected with corona.

This enables the victims to be isolated in a timely manner, and infection chains are broken. After completion by Telekom and SAP, the Corona app is to be released by the Robert Koch Institute . In a second stage, it is also planned to set up a research server that can use pseudonymized data for quality-assuring analysis of the Corona app based on voluntary data donations by the users.

Federal Government Corona Tracing App: Decentralized data storage is popular with experts

Update of April 28, 12:03 p.m .: Ulrich Kelber , the federal data protection officer , is satisfied with the decision of the federal government to only store the data in the planned tracing app for the corona pandemic . This model is “the better for data protection reasons,” he said on Tuesday in the ARD “Morgenmagazin”. Kelber emphasized that data protection is not in the way of health protection. It is important to break the corona infection chains, the app should help. 

Update from April 27: The health expert  Karl Lauterbach (SPD) welcomes the decision of the federal government to save the data of the Corona warning app locally. This was now inevitable, because otherwise the discussion about  data protection would have destroyed acceptance before it was finished, said LauterbachPassauer Neue Presse . Meanwhile, it is unclear when the Corona Tracing app can be launched. Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) assumes that the development could take weeks. But you now want to go the route "as quickly as possible, but also as safely as possible," Spahn told the daily news (ARD). 

On April 30, further discussions by the federal and state governments with Chancellor Merkel on corona loosening are pending. *

Corona app: Federal government favors decentralized storage

First report from April 26 : Berlin - For weeks there has been a debate about a Corona warning app , a main point of controversy is: Where is the data stored? The federal government has now switched to decentralized storage of user data. The Chancellor's Office head Helge Braun and Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (both CDU) confirmed in Berlin on Sunday. 

The broadest possible use of a warning app could make it easier to track corona infection chains - also because targeted contacts would then be tested.

Data protection officers had previously warned against central storage of the data:

The use u. the talks were worth it! On the open letter from D64, @chaosupdates, @loadev, @FIfF_de, @informatikradar u. @DS_Stiftung answers Federal Minister @jensspahn as follows. It is good that the federal government wants to follow the decentralized # CoronaApp approach. pic.twitter.com/g51sEzytKm

- D64 (@ D64eV) April 26, 2020

Corona warning app: Spahn (CDU) - "Voluntary and compliant with data protection"

"As a federal government, we are pursuing an approach that is based on voluntariness, is compliant with data protection and guarantees a high level of IT security when developing a tracing app," emphasized Braun and Spahn. 

The main goal from an epidemiological * perspective is to identify and interrupt infection chains * as early as possible. The government had the goal that, in view of the openings that had already taken place after the extensive contact restrictions *, the tracing app would be ready for use very soon and would find broad acceptance.

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With the corona tracing app, the user data should be stored decentrally. (Icon image)

© dpa / Federico Gambarini

Corona measures: Tracing app should be available "shortly"

The use of the app by as large a section of the population as possible is the basis of their success, the two CDU politicians explained. "To achieve this goal, the federal government is relying on a decentralized software architecture that uses the programming interfaces of the major providers of mobile operating systems that will be available shortly and at the same time integrates epidemiological quality assurance in the best possible way. 

The statement went on to say: “Specifically, this means that we will  push ahead with the use of a consistently decentralized software architecture for use in Germany * . This should also integrate the possibility that citizens can voluntarily transmit data for epidemiological research and quality assurance to the Robert Koch Institute in a pseudonymized form. ”

SPD politician Kevin Kühnert could not resist a smug tip against Adidas in a podcast.

The corona virus broke out in a Munich fashion company. 61 employees have already been tested positively and a number of tests are still pending.

dpa / AFP / frs

* Merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network.

List of rubric lists: © dpa / Matthias Balk

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2020-05-06

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