Luca app: Investigators illegally accessed data

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Luca app: "We condemn this misuse of the data collected by the Luca app for infection protection"

Photo: Christoph Soeder / dpa

The Mainz police unlawfully accessed data from visitors to a restaurant from the Luca app while investigating a death.

There was no sufficient legal basis for this, said the Mainz public prosecutor's office on Friday evening on request.

According to its own statements, the authority had agreed to the query.

As a result, 21 potential witnesses were contacted by phone.

The prosecutor apologized to those affected.

The Südwestrundfunk (SWR) had previously reported on the case.

The Luca app is intended to help restaurant owners and event organizers to do the legally required recording of the contact details of their visitors without a mess of paper.

The investigation followed the fall of a man on November 29th last year after leaving a restaurant, as the SWR reported.

The man died of the consequences a few days later.

With the data query, visitors to the restaurant were found in order to win them as possible witnesses.

Data from the Luca app may not be used for law enforcement.

The health department apparently simulated an infection

Culture4Life GmbH, to which Luca belongs, announced: "We condemn this misuse of the data collected by the Luca app for infection protection." The company received inquiries from the police and public prosecutors about data from users of the app almost every day. They would always be answered in the same way - namely "that we cannot deliver any data because we have no technical access to it due to the encryption concept."

The data could only be provided if the respective health department and the respective company gave their consent in the event of an infection and used their individual keys to decrypt the data, the company said. "The data can then only be viewed by the respective health department." In the case at hand, "the health department probably simulated an infection at pressure or at the request of the police and obtained the company's consent for the data to be made available."

The public prosecutor stated on the case that had become known: "It is ensured that the relevant data is no longer used." No other cases are known in which the contact details of the Luca app had been used.

A corresponding test had been initiated.

The employees of the public prosecutor's office are made aware of the legal requirements, the official data protection officer is informed and involved.

The state commissioner for data protection and freedom of information for Rhineland-Palatinate should be informed.

asc / dpa