German police use coronavirus contact-tracing app to find witnesses

[Tainnor]

Unfortunately, people here are misunderstanding this story.

This is not about the official contact-tracing app by the government (the CWA), which by its very nature is decentralised and doesn't allow for that.

This is about the Luca app, a privately developed contact tracing app that is used by some German states and that uses centralised tracking.

This app has absolutely been the focus of criticism inside of Germany, notably including most security experts and the CCC (Germany's largest hackers' association). These criticisms are not dismissed as conspiracy theories by anyone. As a result, some states are also considering pulling out of the deals with Luca.

What is happening here is a discussion about privacy vs. surveillance which is very much in the open, and has very little to do with the official Coronavirus policy of the federal government.

[SpicyLemonZest]

That's definitely valuable context, but it kinda seems like it just shifts the criticism to German state governments. Why are they using this centralized app with privacy issues if there was a perfectly good decentralized one they could have used?

[rgrieselhuber]

Yup it’s not really government surveillance if they outsource it to a private company.

[mountainriver]

This is the exact thing that people worry about with these kinds of technologies. We are always assured that our data is safe. Then when people forget about it, forces muscle their way into your data.

I guess this is the promise of web3, but it looks like we’re technologically a ways out from that, if ever.

[nexuist]

As someone with a generally favorable view of web3 I don't see how it could help here. All data on the blockchain is public by default and contract tracing on the blockchain would just make it easier, not harder, for bad actors to track you throughout your day.

[pjmlp]

Which is why I find the response from some German federal states to cancel their contracts with Luca is a good message that this kind of data leakage shouldn't be tolerated.

Lets see if they wouldn't be getting a GDPR lawsuit as well.

[TeeMassive]

Here in Québec we have the most restrictive measures in Canada and probably the Americas. All private assemblies banned, vaccine passport for restaurants and other public spaces (soon to be extended to big surface stores such as Walmart and Costco), booster shots now required for the vaccine passport and finally curfew.

And now I just received a recruitment pamphlet from the government for a "citizen digital identity" which will be used on smart phones.

Am I the only one seeing a pattern here?

[belval]

Digital identity is not about finding you, it's a way to keep you various *.gouv.qc.ca in one place. It's a unification of their login and websites in one entity that should make it easier to interact with the government's services.

You can dislike and oppose the current measures (I'm not a fan either FWIW) but that does not mean that everything they are doing to modernize their terrible IT infra is part of a bigger plan.

[sfusato]

No, you're not, but the majority doesn't care at this point at all.

[alexvoda]

Yes you are seing a pattern. The same way a neural net will classify a sofa as a leopard. It also saw a pattern. And in both cases the level of confidence is maximum. But wrong.

[chiefalchemist]

> German police used a tracing app to scout crime witnesses. Some fear that’s fuel for covid conspiracists.

How is it that something happens, actually really happens, and it's still dismissed as fuel for conspiracists?

[YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo]

Because the official app is built so this could never happen there is another commercial app LUCA that got adopted by states and companies because of nepotism and false advertising. The police is using the data of this app not the official one.

[kleiba]

"COVID conspiracists" claim that the pandemic is not real but rather a ploy by the government(s) to control the masses. They would see the use of the data from the corona app as evidence for the latter. However, still, the former does not follow.

[SpicyLemonZest]

At least in the US (relevant because the Washington Post is a US outlet) privacy-related skepticism of contact tracing apps was never seen as a conspiracy theory in the first place. Mainstream organizations expressed significant skepticism and the few contact tracing apps which have gained traction here are built to be structurally incapable of releasing personal information in any circumstances.

[belter]

What is the name for that pattern, where any conspiracy theory, no matter how outlandish, sooner or later always ends up proven as true?

[detaro]

Luca app was widely criticized from the start for this being possible, so this isn't really an example of this.

[syshum]

Because no matter how many times history repeats itself people dismiss the warnings as "conspiracy" because people want to believe the government is inherently good, or has good intentions, this is a false belief.

[vmception]

Its diplomatic writing.

It is fuel. And it should also be criticized by people not susceptible to theories.

[chana_masala]

Well said.

[vmception]

> “We must not allow faith in digital apps, which are an important tool in the fight against covid-19, to disappear,” Konstantin von Notz, a lawmaker for the German Greens, told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

Too late!

[haspoken]

https://archive.is/ehiW3

[nkmnz]

Mainz - known for Gutenberg, BioNTech and illegally using corona contact-tracing data.

[svensken]

Four Main Roles of Government:

1. Keep a rule of law

2. Maintain a stable & competitive economy

3. Turn taxes into public services (defense, roads, etc)

4. Lie