German police use coronavirus contact-tracing app to find witnesses

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/13/german-covid-contact-tracing-app-luca/

by happyopossum • 5 years ago

75 49 5 years ago

washingtonpost.com

chiefalchemist• 5 years ago

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?

chana_masala2• 5 years ago

Well said.

belter• 5 years ago

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

TeeMassive5• 5 years ago

"Alex Jones was right"

kleiba3• 5 years ago

"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.

bondarchuk• 5 years ago

Nah, that's just the typical "caricature conspiracy theory" that's used to dismiss the actually reasonable theories-of-government-misbehaviour held by the vast majority of people who have such beliefs.

syshum4• 5 years ago

While I am sure those people do exist, just like extreme claims of all manner and stripe exist, to dismiss everyone labeled as a covid conspiracist as believing that is factually incorrect

Things like Lab Leak, masking, hell at one time people claiming that the covid vaccine would need boosters were labeled "conspiracist" spreading mis information

Pretty much anyone that says anything 1day to 6 weeks before that thing is uttered by Dr Fauci is labeled as "conspiracist" until such time as Dr Fauci has blessed the position as "Science" because he after all he "is the Science"

syshum4• 5 years ago

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.

SpicyLemonZest2• 5 years ago

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.

Tainnor3• 5 years ago

Yeah, it's the same thing in Germany. The CCC and data protection agencies have raised concerns about the Luca app from day one and were never in danger of being seen as conspiracy theorists.

OP is just strawmanning.

(Moreover, the phrase "could be seen as fuel for conspiracy theorists" doesn't mean that something bad isn't happening, it's usually used as a way of saying "don't do this stupid thing because it encourages people to think we do even stupider things").

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo• 5 years ago

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.

djbebs• 5 years ago

That's not true. There are ways to use the official app to track your past locations, particularly if they have physical access to it.

detaro• 5 years ago

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

vmception4• 5 years ago

Its diplomatic writing.

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

mountainriver• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

vmception4• 5 years ago

Depends on the implementation.

Many organizations are just using blockchains for a standardized namespace for pseudonyms and standardized toolkit for non-chain encryption.

So the users in this case would just sign a message for uniqueness, instead of relying on other forms of entropy like their phone or something. They wouldnt be writing anything to a blockchain for tracking and the addresses wouldnt be used by anything else or have funds in them.

There’s no reason the Luca app also couldn't do it this way. But I’m not sure if it would have mattered, or why the health department had identifying data after decrypting anything.

pjmlp2• 5 years ago

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.

ksaj• 5 years ago

GDPR is exactly what came to mind when I read this. I don't have a full understanding of GDPR, but I thought this is what it is supposed to guard you from.

Likewise, I haven't read the Terms of Use for installing the app. It very well might have a clause for this use case.

vmception4• 5 years ago

Can sovereigns like the health department be sued under GDPR?

TeeMassive5• 5 years ago

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?

sfusato• 5 years ago

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

belval3• 5 years ago

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.

syshum4• 5 years ago

the road to tyranny is paved with convenience and "modernization"

TeeMassive5• 5 years ago

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.

[CITATION NEEDED] That's the what the job offers talked about and doesn't justify the focus on smart phones. Unless you've read the job offer or, like me, personally know people on the inside, you're just making stuff up.

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.

A personal identity application, on a cell phone, is already being abused by the government.

alexvoda3• 5 years ago

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.

svensken• 5 years ago

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

Tainnor3• 5 years ago

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.

SpicyLemonZest2• 5 years ago

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?

Tainnor3• 5 years ago

Yes it does, and the German state governments have made very questionable decisions here.

I'm arguing against the misguided notion that this is being dismissed as conspiracy theory, which it absolutely is not. Luca has been controversial since the beginning.

The reason why a centralised solution was chosen is quite simple to see, though:

In the centralised system, the health agency knows who to contact when they might have been infected and could in theory force these people to do a test or into quarantine (in practice, they usually don't have enough personnel to do so, though...).

With the decentralised system, every person can get a notification when they could have been exposed. Whether or not they act upon that notification is up to them.

In the end, I don't think the privacy nightmare is worth it (especially given that health departments are understaffed), but I can see how other actors could come to a different conclusion without it having to be a conscious decision to collect a ton of data for other purposes.

eqvinox• 5 years ago

They basically fell for an opportunist gold digger with a PR department. The driving factor has literally been a rapper, this dude: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smudo

(… I wish I was joking. I'm not.)

[ed.] just to be clear: that absolutely does not excuse the states' decisions. While it might be understandable that someone can drive social and media discourse with some luck and prior experience, it's the states' job to do their due diligence and not base their decisions on empty PR.

throw827474737• 5 years ago

The state one was a little late with features (as always, nevertheless, now has all we need) and a famous pop star lobbied around like crazy in talkshows and on politicians (he is financially invested in that stupid luca app).

How it goes as usually.

Just wanted to also leave this here: https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2021/luca-app-ccc-fordert-bund...

"The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) demands an immediate end to states' alimentation of Smudo's million-dollar tax grab "Luca app."

and also as always, predicted the illegal data grab, but noone ever listens..

rgrieselhuber2• 5 years ago

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

syshum4• 5 years ago

umm it still is government surveillance

vmception4• 5 years ago

“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!

nkmnz• 5 years ago

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

haspoken• 4 years ago

https://archive.is/ehiW3

German police use coronavirus contact-tracing app to find witnesses

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