People go for a walk in the sunshine along the Isar river as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Munich, Germany, April 4, 2020.
An approach pioneered by Singapore where a smartphone app traces coronavirus infected persons without invading their privacy is what Germany hopes to adopt after a broad political consensus emerged.
The use of individual smartphone location data to track the virus spread would be illegal under national and European Union privacy laws as per Germans for they are suspicious about digital surveillance.
But despite the hesitation, they created an agreement across party lines that it would be helpful and acceptable to track close-proximity Bluetooth handshakes between smartphones.
Resembling Singapore's Tracetogether app, which records the history of contacts on a device, aims to contact-trace persons who get in touch with a positive COVID-19 patient to reduce its future risk and to contain the virus as early as possible.
Fraunhofer Institute for Telecoms, Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) shared that they are confident that they can release the solution in the next few weeks.
Being one of Germany's institutes for applied research, the HHI mentioned that they are working with others across Europe to develop an app that would generate the proximity and duration of contact between people to be stored for two weeks on cellphones anonymously and without the use of any location data.
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In response to an inquiry regarding the scope and limitations of using this application, HHI emphasized that the prerequisite for this application is full compliance with German Data Protection Laws and Usage on a voluntary basis.
Coordinating with Germany's National Coronavirus Health Response, The Robert Koch Institute welcomed the development work done by HHI but they declined to add further comment.
Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute warned that Germany is still at the early stage of the pandemic and its hospitals will soon maximize their capacity to treat patients and as of the moment Germany has reported 57, 298 coronavirus cases with 455 deaths.
Data Privacy Advocates Support the Usage of the Tracing App.
An urgent debate on the use of the smartphones and latest technology in managing the coronavirus outbreak has already been called by the country's Health Minister Jens Spahn, but only once the containment efforts that have previously been implemented have already succeeded in decreasing the number of new infections.
His idea has also won the support of those who are traditional advocates of data privacy, including the Social Democrats and the opposition Greens.
According to Ulrich Kelber, Germany's data protection commissioner, he supports the use of location and contact data information as long as it is shared on a voluntary basis, even describing it as extremely useful.
On top of this, privacy advocates even support the use of the smartphone tracking app saying that they do not see any inherent contradiction between its use and data protection. They also stated that they support the usage of the smartphone technology saying it could provide valuable contribution in containing the pandemic.
Johannes Abeler and Matthias Baecker, who are both academics; and Ulf Buermeyer, who is a privacy campaigner even said that contact tracing is a central precondition in order to loosen the implementing rules of the lockdown caused by COVID-19 in the foreseeable future.
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