To monitor the 15 – kilometer rule in Corona hotspots, the President of the Municipal Assembly Uwe Brandl can also imagine using cell phone data – a suggestion, which promptly aroused broad resistance on a political level. In the Bavarian state government, the move was reportedly met with only shaking of the head and skepticism. The Federal Data Protection Officer Ulrich Kelber also strictly rejects the proposal.

“Today we could read movement profiles from the cell phones and in this way determine very accurately where people are. We just have to decide now what is more important, health protection or data protection, “Brandl said on Monday morning on Bayerischer Rundfunk.

“I think we just have to have more courage to use the digital possibilities,” said Brandl. Even the police only have limited resources to control the 15 kilometer rule. “So there will only be random checks. (…) And I believe that every regulation is only as good as it can be executed and monitored.”

“Crazy idea” and “breaking a taboo” While no one in the state government wanted to officially comment on Brandl’s statement, representatives from the Greens, SPD, FDP and AfD expressed outrage. From the point of view of the group chairman of the Greens, Katharina Schulze, Brandl’s proposal is a “crazy idea” that fuels uncertainty and mistrust in the population. The collection of general movement profiles of the citizens is inconceivable in a free democracy and violates the Basic Law.

The FDP parliamentary group leader Martin Hagen described the proposal as a “breaking a taboo”. Germany must not become a surveillance state that puts digital shackles on its citizens. “To spy on the movement data of 83 millions of people in order to control an already questionable regulation – that will meet the bitter resistance of us liberals.”

The SPD also reacted indignantly: parliamentary group chairman Horst Arnold warned of uncertainty among the citizens and emphasized: “This is without any legal basis – and absolutely disproportionate. Not acceptable and a revelation of helplessness and ignorance.” The digital policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, Gerd Mannes, said: “We condemn this tendency to think about surveillance methods in a free and democratic state that is more likely to be found in totalitarian states.”

Technically not feasible reliably The Federal Data Protection Officer Ulrich Kelber told the Augsburger Allgemeine from Tuesday: “GPS data cannot even differentiate between the underground car park and the fourth floor in a house. GPS does not work in buildings.” Even a radio cell query does not even reliably show in which street a person has been. “So what’s that supposed to be? That’s no solution.

In the Corona hotspots in Bavaria, the following has been the case since the beginning of the week: Those who live in an area with particularly high numbers of infections are only allowed to go on excursions within one radius of 15 kilometers around his place of residence. Which municipalities are affected depends on the figures published by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

The rule applies automatically in counties and urban districts that have the value of 200 new infections per 100. 000 residents within a week. Anyone who goes shopping, drives to work or see a doctor want, for whom the restriction does not apply.

(olb)