Authorities are said to have accessed contact details from Luca-App and Co. in more than 100 cases
Created: 01/20/2022, 18:39
By: Marcus Giebel
Mandatory in many places: In the Corona crisis, the deposit of data is required for contact tracing.
© Christoph Soeder/dpa
The data collected for contact tracing in the event of corona infections should only be stored for this reason.
Authorities also seem to be keen on the information.
Munich – The Luca app and its counterparts for collecting data for contact tracing do not exactly trigger leaps and bounds in Germany.
After all, data protection is particularly important in this country, and the registration required in many public places is carried out rather reluctantly.
With the associated concerns about the further processing of personal information, the thought of the protective effect fades, because contact chains can be traced quickly.
However, the Luca app and co. seem to be particularly popular with the police and public prosecutors.
In the past few weeks, individual requests from authorities in Baden-Württemberg to be able to use the contact data stored in the course of the corona pandemic for investigations have already been brought to light.
Police access data from the Luca app: Apparently more than 100 cases with at least 500 people
But law enforcement agencies seem to want to access this information on a much larger scale.
According to research by the
ZDF team today
, they accessed the data collected for the Corona contact recording in more than 100 cases.
The information of at least 500 people had been viewed.
However, since these queries are not recorded separately, a significantly higher number can be assumed.
In some cases, the police even acted without the knowledge of the public prosecutor.
Video: Virologist no longer considers contact tracing appropriate
The Infection Protection Act draws a narrow framework for the processing of personal data
The investigators would thus violate the Infection Protection Act, which has stated since November 19, 2021: "The data transmitted will not be passed on by the responsible authorities (...) or used by them for purposes other than contact tracing is excluded." However, it is legally disputed whether this would also apply in cases such as the investigation of a murder.
A sensitive topic that offers material for discussion.
According to
ZDF
, however, there were at least five queries in which the data was processed.
The public prosecutor's office in Mosbach, Baden-Württemberg, used visitor data from a swimming pool in the summer of 2021 to locate victims and witnesses in investigations into suspected sexual abuse of children.
Because they wanted to find witnesses to a fall in a restaurant, the Mainz public prosecutor evaluated the data of 21 people from the Luca app.
To this end, the Rhineland-Palatinate data protection officer initiated a regulatory procedure.
Police access to contact tracing data: cases in Koblenz, Trier and Stuttgart
According to the report, the Koblenz public prosecutor's office checked the paper list of an innkeeper last summer to clarify a theft.
In addition, according to the Trier public prosecutor's office, the police used the contact details of a suspect and a witness in the course of investigations into a capital crime in August 2021.
In Stuttgart, according to the local public prosecutor's office, the police evaluated the guest list of an event in July 2021 because there was suspicion of an attempted homicide.
There was neither a judicial decision nor was the public prosecutor involved.
According to the report, a case from last year in which, according to the Oldenburg public prosecutor's office, the paper list of a restaurant may have been accessed, can no longer be fully reconstructed.
Show me your contact details: The police seem to like working with the personal details of guests in restaurants or swimming pools.
© Stefan Puchner/dpa
Operators of the Luca app say they are asked for help by the authorities every day
According to ZDF
, in at least 96 cases
before the law was amended a few months ago, data was collected by the police and public prosecutor's office in the course of investigations.
In some cases, it was about theft or unauthorized removal from the scene of the accident.
According to the information provided by the operators of the Luca app, they receive inquiries from the authorities on a daily basis.
In most cases, however, these would be blocked immediately.
Even official requests would end up with the management - in two to three dozen cases.
Apparently, the Mainz health department was particularly bold.
It faked an infection to get the operator to cooperate.
A spokeswoman explained to the station team that the data could not be released technically.
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