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Launching an application that would use Bluetooth to alert smartphone users when they have come into contact with someone infected with the virus is considered crucial in the fight against the pandemic.
Critics said it would allow governments to accumulate personal information and could lead to massive state surveillance. Image: Pixabay.com
FRANKFURT – The German government switched on Sunday to endorse a coronavirus tracking application using technology compatible with Google and Apple, abandoning a German-led alternative that had come under fire over privacy concerns.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Helge Braun said Berlin was now in favor of a “decentralized software architecture” that would see user data stored on the phones of people rather than in a central database.
“Our goal is for the tracking application to be ready for use very soon and with strong public and civil society acceptance,” Spahn and Braun said in a joint statement.
The launch of an application that would use Bluetooth to alert smartphone users when they have come into contact with someone infected with the virus is considered crucial in the fight against the pandemic, as countries like Germany relax their blockades.
Until then, Berlin had supported a pan-European application known as PEPP-PT developed by some 130 European scientists, including experts from the Fraunhofer research institute in Germany and the public health body of the Robert Koch Institute.
But the proposed application faced growing criticism of its plan to store data on a central server.
Critics said it would allow governments to accumulate personal information and could lead to massive state surveillance.
In an open letter earlier this week, some 300 leading academics urged governments to drop the centralized approach, saying it was at risk of undermining public confidence.
They said an approach developed by Apple and Google, whose operating systems run the majority of the world’s smartphones, was more privacy-friendly.
The tech giants plan to collaborate with applications, such as the Swiss-run DP-3T, that use a decentralized system, which would see the data stored on individual devices.
The European Commission has also recommended that data collected through coronavirus contact tracking applications be stored only on users’ phones and encrypted.
The German government has repeatedly stressed that the use of any coronavirus application would be voluntary and anonymous, in a country still haunted by Nazi-era espionage and the former East German secret police.
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