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ID wallet with the digital version of a driver's license: withdrawn shortly after the election
Photo:
Christoph Dernbach / dpa
The stories of the people of Schild, the inhabitants of Schilda, undoubtedly belong to the cultural foundation of Germany. The first collection of these grandiose, idiot rogue pieces appeared in 1597 and promised "wondrously strange / adventurous / unheard-of / and bit unwritten stories". For example, when the shield burghers wanted to protect their valuable town hall bell from being robbed by enemies, they sank it in the lake. In order to be able to memorize the spot exactly, they made a notch in the edge of the boat at the exact location of the bell recess. Smart! However, when they later did not find the bell, although they had looked at the notched spot - they cut it out of the boat's edge in anger at the evil notch. Which made the notch bigger. It is not recordedbut the sinking of the badly damaged boat would suit the shield citizens perfectly. Schilda is to implement something sensible in such a spectacularly unwise manner that the opposite of what was hoped for may even occur.
Jumping from the 16th to the 21st century: The digital Schilda is now called Germany, and here I would like to report three current pranks with the names Nora, E-Prescription and ID Wallet.
Unfortunately, it is hardly possible anymore as a private person to keep track of the large number of failed digital projects in the country.
Streich
Nora
is quickly outlined, it is the official app of the 16 federal states for emergency calls.
More precisely: the app from 15 federal states, because - big surprise - the administrative failure called Berlin, which has become urban, unfortunately did not manage to get the, quote, "necessary votes" at the start of Nora at the end of September.
Removed from the App Store shortly after publication
The app naturally serves people with all possible speech or hearing impairments. Or in emergency situations in which you cannot speak loudly, a silent emergency call is also possible. Sounds good! If it weren't for Digitalschilda. It starts with the app only being available in German and English. How simple and, above all, how useful offers in Turkish and Arabic would have been to make language barriers easier to overcome. Of course, the emergency call is also processed without sound, namely via chat. Here the already narrow possibilities purr together again, because Nora succinctly announces that you should write in German, otherwise you cannot guarantee anything.
In addition, not all areas in Germany are connected to the Nora system, which is why you sometimes get the message "There is no Nora emergency call here". But not even that at the moment. Because the Nora app was withdrawn from the app stores a few days after its publication. Namely because the "high demand" would have made work on the infrastructure of the emergency call necessary. The servers are overloaded. Almost telltale that no one apparently expected internally that a state project would interest more than twelve people. If you urgently need the app, you can still get it now, but not via the App Store, but via the contact form - and all that's missing is a fax number. The first app you get by faxthat would be iconic for the Digitalschilda Germany.
more on the subject
Digitization of the health system: e-prescription is now in trial operation
Digital sign prank
e-prescription
, with its full name electronic prescription, can be seen as underlining the large, digital over-sign bourgeoisie »electronic health card« (eGK).
Chancellor Angela Merkel said about it in 2005 that it was a »lighthouse project« to prove to the world »in which areas we are ahead«.
In 2021 we have undoubtedly proven that, just differently than expected.
The electronic health card is considered by some to be the Berlin airport of the health system. The Federal Ministry of Health is currently providing information: "The eGK applications have been introduced gradually since autumn 2020." Thunderstorm, Merkel was right, the project is actually progressing at the speed of a lighthouse! In this summer of 2021, the basis for the deeper meaning of the electronic health card was laid, namely, it serves as access to the "electronic patient record" (ePA). This, in turn, should be available to all legally insured persons from July 1, 2021. The head of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians answered the question of what benefits the insured have had from the ePA so far with the words: »Specifically, none at all«.
No benefit at all is not very much by international lighthouse standards.
It is therefore not surprising that the digital coup d'état with the e-prescription, which is based on the ePA infrastructure, is not coming.
It was actually supposed to be introduced on October 1, 2021, but the responsible company Gematik, 51 percent of which belongs to the Federal Ministry of Health and otherwise to all possible health associations such as the German Medical Association or the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, canceled the start the day before.
Surely just a coincidence that this was only announced in the week after the election.
It is particularly bourgeois that the federal government has stipulated a legal obligation to use the e-prescription by January 1, 2022 at the latest - but whether the appointment can be kept is of course completely unclear.
more on the subject
App no longer available: Digital driver's license stopped for the time being after information about security gaps
Just like the entire mixture of the third and largest current, digital shield bourgeois prank: the
ID wallet
.
This is also an app that should serve as the basis for identification and thus, for example, should allow the digital driver's license on the smartphone.
The ID wallet was published in the app stores shortly before the election - and withdrawn shortly after the election.
Smart!
The well-known hacker Lilith Wittmann analyzed on Twitter what was wrong and bad and broken about the ID wallet.
In an interview with Netzpolitik.org, she explains three basic problems:
The first was "a poorly configured domain name server" that would have allowed attackers to take over any subdomains, which means that criminals could have completely controlled what supposedly takes place on the servers of the ID wallet provider Digital Enabling.
Translation: It's like being able to determine what is on saschalobo.bundesregierung.de (that would be a subdomain).
The second problem was a load problem, the infrastructure of the project simply collapsed because there were too many requests at the same time.
Translation: Gosh, it's 2021, there are service providers for that kind of thing.
The third problem, however, was again a telltale double problem: a lack of proof of identity plus blockchain.
Because whoever queries the data of an ID wallet practically does not have to authenticate at all.
Lilith Wittmann describes the unfavorable double effect as follows: »The users cannot check who is really asking.
So you could just pull off your personal information.
And once they are gone, it is too late because they are stored signed in a blockchain.
It is always clear that this is real data.
That can't be erased. ”She sees the only reason to use blockchain technology here because it sounds cool and modern.
Translation: Political PR instead of technological substance.
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Sasha Lobo
Reality shock: ten lessons from the present
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Andreas Scheuer is the shield mayor - but not solely to blame
Wait ... is not on this cue - yes right! Of course, Andreas Scheuer is largely responsible for the digital driver's license for the ID Wallet. Naturally! Scheuer, the ministerial lower limit of competence of the last federal government. Scheuer, who is responsible for the digital infrastructure, is a billionaire. In short, Scheuer, the shield mayor of digital Germany. But despite the enormous effort that Federal Minister Andreas Scheuer is able to provide in the event of digital failure, he cannot be to blame for everything. Neither is he.
Because the responsibility for the fact that Germany is the digital shield bears roughly one third of the total subordination of the digital in the Merkel era, sometimes even leading to digital hostility. The grotesque, exuberant and dysfunctional bureaucracy in this country. As well as a circumstance that Lilith Wittmannn, intimate expert on many federal digital projects, describes in an interview: »The lack of specialist knowledge in the administration, meaning that people there lead IT projects who actually have no idea what they are doing. But for whom this is just the next project. "Supplemented by a misunderstood error culture:" It is still customary to also sell shit projects as a complete success, although all three cross the mark when it's over. "
That also means: You can't even learn from mistakes what the minimum requirement for any project failure would be.
Germany, you digitally wondrous, adventurous, unheard of country.