A small device that sounds the alarm if we get too close in the club?
What sounds strange is being implemented in Stuttgart for half a million euros.
Stuttgart / Saarbrücken - Sweating people crowd together, people dance, laugh and drink.
It will take some time before this becomes "normal" again in clubs, at concerts or at cultural events.
In order to open the gates despite Corona, Stuttgart wants to test a new, nationwide unique project: a distance tracker for events.
The local council approved the model on Thursday evening.
Anyone attending an event is given a credit card-sized device at the entrance that continuously measures the distance to other devices.
If the distance is too short in too long a time, according to the city, there should be a “real-time warning system” with “vibration or alarm tone”.
“Ultimately, that's nothing great other than the corona warning app just as a separate device,” Thorsten Lehr explains in an interview with
SWR
.
Leer is professor of clinical pharmacy at Saarland University, which helped develop the project.
With the measurements, the researchers want to gain important corona findings for future openings.
With the distance tracker to the corona party: How should the model work?
In contrast to the Corona app, however, according to Lehr, the distance trackers should measure much more precisely. According to Lehr in the official report from the city of Stuttgart, an innovative ultra-broadband system can detect distances of up to 10 centimeters. Special settings for partners or household members should also be possible. The data can then be read and evaluated by the institute. The devices are numbered or named for this purpose. So no personal data is stored on the tracker itself. They are only compared with a registration list if there is a positive Corona case. After the event, the tracker is simply returned.
The distance tracker is intended to relieve the health authorities of corona tracking and to save resources in tests and laboratories.
Stuttgart has approved the project and is investing 495,500 euros.
The trackers will now be tested for a total of nine months.
The corona distance tracker: good idea or just "disturbing"?
Not everyone thinks this is a good idea. The journalist Eva Wolfangel addresses Professor Lehr directly on Twitter and writes: "Dear Mr. Lehr, first of all: I find the very idea of a technology that sounds an alarm when people get close to one another to be extremely disturbing and dystopian." After a short time The result was an exchange of blows, she found it disproportionate and wrong to develop technologies that measure with an accuracy of 10 cm which people come when and where. "This type of surveillance does more harm than good."
In a telephone conversation with the news portal Focus, Lehr defended the conditions of the project. "I understand that when people are afraid of their data, that is why you have to provide clarification." However, he does not see any danger in this case, otherwise he would not participate in the project. The ethics committee and the data protection officer of Baden-Württemberg are involved. The ventilation system of a location is also included in the criteria in order to prevent transmission via aerosols. “We want to use the scientific study to see what is feasible. Because the Corona warning app, which I think is good, is not suitable for scientific questions. If you want to learn something, you also have to look at the data. "(Vs)
