Applications with Pepp-PT: Anti-corona technology still has its difficulties

On Wednesday, the creators of the European initiative Corona Tech, Pepp-PT, received a kind of official recognition: the heads of government of the federal and state governments decided, in addition to the relaxation deadline in early May, that it should also have an attempt to control technological epidemics. They did not choose one of the many existing applications that are used in Singapore, South Korea or Austria. They support the basic technology of “Pan-European Proximity Tracking to preserve privacy”, or Pepp-PT for short. Tracking works differently than classic tracking without location data – only contacts are tracked, but not where they are held.

Based on this software framework, which protects users ‘privacy according to manufacturers’ promises, different national applications will be created, or even several applications in the same country. You can imagine it as the common chassis platforms of automotive companies, on which different models can be built. However, to prevent wild growth and free-riders, each of the new Pepp-PT applications must be certified by the founding consortium.

In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is working on such a crown application. In the post-closure period, it is intended to help identify new sources of infection faster than before and to break infection chains as soon as possible.

Unlike apps in South Korea or China, Pepp-PT based smartphone apps that work with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) data radio are said to be compliant with the strictly strict European data protection standards . Furthermore, citizens should be able to voluntarily decide whether to download the application, and not be forced to do so.

The German app will arrive at the end of April at the earliest

The creators include more than 130 scientists, in addition to the RKI, the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications (Heinrich Hertz Institute, HHI) is also represented. “More than 40 governments contacted us and announced that they would participate,” said project spokesman Chris Boos SPIEGEL, in seven countries such as France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and, more recently, Austria, there are already government decisions. “Many don’t just want to jump, they want to actively work,” Boos said. This international cooperation and the possibility of “roaming” across borders is important for the next step after loosening up in Germany: “Pan-European collaboration can play an important role in opening the country’s borders.”

The initiators had originally announced a first German version of the app in mid-April. That was overly optimistic, apparently it should be published by the end of the month at the earliest. This is due to the complex integration of other actors, such as test labs, Boos says, and the claim to protect the data and privacy of all users at all times. Apparently, security and privacy controls are causing more delays. Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) said in the morning magazine ARD that the app was developing “under high pressure”: “But the truth is also that it really takes three to four weeks instead of two weeks to make it really good. “

Coinitiator Boos explains that the subsequent launch will also follow the recommendations of the health psychologists involved. They would like to publish the application as close as possible to the date of facilitation, as this increases the expected availability for use by users. The voluntary approach depends on your support and cooperation. According to epidemiologists involved, around 60 percent of citizens would have to download the app, and in turn, at least 60 percent would use it correctly and consistently to help curb the spread of the disease effectively.

Since the concept was introduced, several possible weaknesses of the Pepp-PT solution have been criticized: many doubt that an application based on voluntary action is effective. Initial investigations into the willingness of citizens to download such an application have given different results. In a survey by Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, only 56 percent of respondents stated that they wanted to do this. Some politicians are already thinking of incentive systems to motivate citizens, such as tax credits. There are voices of the Union that can also imagine the duty of use. Federal Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD), on the other hand, noted that the app would only find the necessary acceptance among the population if the planned voluntary use remained.

Others fear that “voluntariness” may be undermined, by social pressure from others or by decisions made by companies: How voluntary would an app be if only people with an activated Corona app could use public transportation? Or were they asked by employers as conditions of access to the workplace? The installation would be “at will” at best, critics say.

The question of how reliable Bluetooth distance measurement is is also controversial. After all, it could happen that a cell phone measures proximity to a cell phone in the neighboring apartment, even through a thin wall, as is sometimes the case with external speakers. In such a scenario, the user would be considered at risk of infection even though a wall separated him from an infected person. Also, Bluetooth is not the same as Bluetooth: the radio signal strength varies with different end devices.

The manufacturers of Pepp-PT have won the Bundeswehr for measurements in order to “determine the effectiveness and error rate of the system,” according to an internal note from the Defense Ministry. At the Julius Leber barracks in Berlin, 48 soldiers are completing the corresponding series of measurements. Five test runs have already been completed, eight more are planned, according to the newspaper, and the Fraunhofer Institute is also planning a test “in mobile locations like the subway.”

Boos believes the evidence to date has been encouraging. Success rates were between 70 and 80 percent on average. “We are sure that is enough,” he said in a video slot on Friday. However, the conditions in the barracks so far have not been particularly realistic: so far, 28 Samsung smartphones (A40) and 20 other types of Android smartphones from various manufacturers have been tested, but not with iPhones. Predictable compatibility issues here can only be solved when Google and Apple have launched their joint project, and when Pepp-PT apps build on it.

Dispute about data storage

A dispute between IT security experts is causing unrest around the project: Should data be saved locally or on a central server? The Pepp-PT consortium is currently opting for a core solution, but this does not always have to remain the case. There are many different approaches to what apps can be built, says Boos. The creators of Pepp-PT are open to this.

More recently, however, they took excerpts from their publications on the already developed decentralized approach (DP3T). Some participants strongly criticize this apparently unspoken farewell to a decentralized model: “We cannot assess what Pepp-PT is developing,” criticizes, for example, Kenneth Paterson, a crypto expert at ETH Zurich, the lack of transparency: “This group it is isolated and external experts cannot verify your system. There is no document with the exact specifications. Nor can we examine the program code. ” Some observers on Twitter speak of a “backward step.” The discussion escalated on Friday morning. via Twitter Pepp-PT co-initiator Marcel Salathé of EPFL in Lausanne announced his departure from the project that he would now put all his energy into the decentralized approach.

His former colleague, Boos, regretted the move and warned that it would bring the “great pandemic control project” to the fore again. It was a technical debate, both models guaranteed privacy, and there were arguments for both. “We have to be careful not to disturb the public and not lose sight of our common goal.”

However, suppose the new Corona apps were installed by large sections of the population and functioned reasonably reliably despite all the weaknesses of Bluetooth: Would cell phones cause frustrating performance in already overloaded test labs if users receive an infection warning but then wait in vain? until they get clarity through a test?

Testing capabilities in Germany are constantly expanding, Boos said, on the other hand “creativity is required here.” “We are in contact with many new companies dealing with epidemic management and who can develop elegant solutions to all these questions.” Pepp-PT should only allow tracking of infections running, nothing more and nothing less.

However, the RKI itself could get in the way of the infection tracking project. Because ten days ago, the institute presented its data donation application, which has nothing to do with Pepp-PT. The data donation application asks users to provide health data such as resting heart rate and sleep quality from their fitness trackers for analysis. Pseudonymized fitness data is not intended to warn users of possible infection risks, but rather to allow researchers to recognize, for example, by increasing heart rate at rest in a district, that a wave of infection is rolling there.