STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) – After an incident with data from the Luca app in Mainz, the criticism of the software for contact tracking in Baden-Württemberg is again loud. While the state government is still sticking to it, politicians from the Greens and FDP are calling for the digital tool to be deleted from mobile phones and not to extend the expiring contract with the provider. “As far as the warning and the follow-up are concerned, the Luca app is dead,” said the network policy spokesman for the Green parliamentary group in the state parliament, Alexander Salomon, of the dpa. It had previously become known that the Mainz police had unlawfully accessed data from visitors to a restaurant from the Luca app while investigating a death.
The app has a data protection and security problem, criticized the digital policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Daniel Karrais, on Saturday. In addition, the Baden-Württemberg health authorities barely used the data for contact tracing, and the catering industry largely refrained from doing so. For the one-year use of the software until March, the state also pays an amount of 3.7 million euros. A good alternative is the official and free corona warning app, which also has a check-in function, Karrais told the dpa. “It’s better to drive with it.”
The Mainz investigation followed the fall of a man on November 29th last year after leaving a restaurant, as the SWR reported. The man died of the consequences a few days later. With the data query, visitors to the restaurant were found in order to win them as possible witnesses. Data from the Luca app may not be used for law enforcement.
The Luca app is intended to help restaurant owners and event organizers to do the legally required recording of visitor contacts without a mess of paperwork. However, the software is too slow and is no longer used by the health authorities, criticized Green politician Salomon. “Uninstalls the #LucaApp. Immediately. And then immediately use the #coronawarnapp,” he tweeted on Saturday. He called on Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Health Manne Lucha (Greens) on Twitter to also say goodbye to the Luca app.
Culture4Life GmbH, to which Luca belongs, announced: “We condemn this misuse of the data collected by the Luca app for infection protection.” The company received inquiries from the police and public prosecutors about data from users of the app almost every day. They would always be answered in the same way – namely “that we cannot deliver any data because we have no technical access to it due to the encryption concept”.
The data could only be provided if the respective health department and the respective company gave their consent in the event of an infection and used their individual keys to decrypt the data, the company said. “The data can then only be viewed by the respective health department.” In the present case, the health department simulated a case of infection at pressure or at the request of the police and obtained the consent of the company to provide the data./mov/DP/edh
–
