The Munich philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin has underpinned his appeal to collect user location data via the Corona Warning App (CWA). Such tracking on smartphones would be the easiest way to be able to trace infection chains more easily in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, he said on Thursday in an online debate in the authorities mirror . It is important to learn from the example of South Korea. There a tracking app is used for quarantine monitoring, not for tracking sources of infection.

According to Nida- Rümelins should make the location data collected via the CWA available to the health authorities in the event of a positive corona test. The person concerned put his smartphone there on the table and “they read it out”. This could also be made “pseudonymized, appropriately encrypted,” said the former Federal Government Commissioner for Culture. But it would be important to provide “traceability of identities”, “since there are also false-positive tests” and nobody should be sent into quarantine for free.

Acceptance will remain That the acceptance of the Corona app, which was previously based purely on tracing, with such a tracking process is falling , the vice chairman of the German Ethics Council does not believe. “Our user data, which we leave behind on various platforms, are used by tech giants almost at will for economic purposes and are controlled by the NSA,” he said. Many people knew this after the Snowden revelations, but did not change their behavior despite the associated dangers to privacy.

Most people kept the location services activated on their smartphones because it was convenient , explained Nida-Rümelin. For health protection purposes it would only have to be legitimate “that we give a few harmless incentives” for users to feed an upgraded CWA with their location data. He is sure that people will join in when they go to the hairdresser or restaurant or want to order an espresso on the ICE: “I’m not worried here at all.”

Already in one The draft bill from March for a reform of the Infection Protection Act was intended to allow the health authorities to track location data, argued the ethicist. A “legal consideration” has already taken place at least in the Federal Ministry of Health. This approach could therefore be used to identify contact persons for infected people. Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) quickly deleted the passage from the cabinet after protests.

Attendees the online debate of the authorities mirror.

(Image: Stefan Krempl (screenshot))

Accelerate contact tracking Nida-Rümelin is nevertheless certain that everything must now be done to ensure that the offices are in place set to be able to digitally trace infection chains. Otherwise, there is a risk of a third or fourth lockdown in a few weeks if the numbers with contagions rise again. According to him, such tough measures are likely to cause many millions of deaths worldwide, for example through hunger. Data protection is very important, “but we also have to weigh this fundamental right with others”.

Overall, Nida-Rümelin was extremely concerned “that we in Europe are responding to the epidemic challenge with such helplessness to have”. If there wasn’t a vaccination, there would only be one shutdown after the next. South Korea, on the other hand, initially had the second highest infection rate after China, but “thanks to a very clever containment strategy in the end” it was just under 1000 Dead landed, “we at over 40. 000” in to 50 million inhabitants.

There is no tracking app in South Korea of infection chains that locate their users. The local health authorities proceed largely manually, but also rely on credit card data and videos from surveillance cameras. The quarantine app is mandatory, but will be deleted afterwards. She had a massive data leak at the end of July.

No question of data protection Anyone who says data protection prevents health is “talking nonsense”, countered the Thuringian data protection officer Lutz Hasse Nida-Rümelin. If the CWA were to be compulsory, this would not only have practical consequences, for example in terms of controllability. There would also be “an outcry across the country,” says the lawyer. A tracking app with GPS, the current location and other metadata is also likely to “run out of steam in our digital Middle Ages” because health authorities still work with paper and there is a lack of staff. In view of only “theoretical added value”, such a measure would be “currently meaningless”.

The chairman of the professional association of German laboratory doctors, Andreas Bobrowski, also warned against excessive zeal. The CWA is quite successful with millions of users and thousands of patients who shared positive infections almost daily. In principle, however, it is an “add-on to normal medical business”. On the basis of hundreds of phone calls with those who tested positive, it was found that “a lot of people know exactly where they got infected”, especially in their families or in old people’s and nursing homes. You could also pass this information on to the office.

No mandatory use “In spite of all its expressiveness, we do not want to ignore the relationship of trust and the need for data protection,” said Bobrowski in favor of maintaining a voluntary reporting system via the app. A few screws can still be turned, but there shouldn’t be any compulsory use.

At least in Schleswig-Holstein, by far the largest number of health authorities can now also communicate digitally with the laboratories, reported the Lübeck. There is also a dedicated laboratory app that can also be used to send the test result to the smartphone. The crucial time between the smear and the notification has become significantly shorter. The Sormas system for fast digital tracing did not fail either: Originally, all health authorities should be connected to 2023, now this is to create “a year earlier”. The federal and state governments have a more ambitious schedule: according to them, the program should now be installed nationwide by the end of February.

(olb)