Investigators use the Luca app for their own purposes, although this is prohibited. The case shows how blind technology is used in the pandemic.
The state is looking for the virus. That’s why people have learned that they have to scan QR codes with their cell phones at entrances to events and restaurants to get in at all. Infection chains are to be tracked, infected people are to be found. But because the state is sometimes looking for people for completely different reasons, what had to happen now happened: In Mainz, the criminal police have a technology abusedthat is actually only supposed to help against the pandemic.
A man fell and died in front of a pub. The public prosecutor had the health department give them data from the Luca app, in which guests leave names and telephone numbers. The police suddenly had 21 possible witnesses on the line. They had left their data in the firm belief that only official corona hunters would have access to them. Using the data for police investigations is explicitly prohibited. But it is not the first case in which investigators rely on Luca data.
These are the consequences of a pandemic policy that blindly relies on technology, the effects of which those responsible are probably not clear about. There were enough warnings about Luca: an app that was distributed to 13 federal states, including rapper and Luca investor Smudo from the Fantastic Four and which many offices hardly use anymore.
One point of criticism was always: the app collects personal data centrally instead of technically ensuring that nobody can abuse it as an all-seeing eye. Such a single mountain of data always arouses desires, and in Mainz they have now given in to them.
Because many Germans are particularly sensitive to data protection thanks to the Stasi, census and the never-ending attempts to introduce a form of mass surveillance with data retention, politicians have always emphasized: Anti-Corona technology will never be surveillance technology. If authorities do not properly separate one from the other, they are forfeiting the very trust that they currently need so badly.