Corona-warn-app to become transparent as “open source
The program code of the announced corona-warn-app is to be published for the examination by a broad public. This is the result of decisions made by chancellor angela merkel (CDU) and the heads of the german states.
"The app becomes transparent as open source provided," says the paper. As soon as a widely usable app was available, it would be important for large parts of the population to make use of this possibility. They were able to learn when they had contact with an infected person and respond quickly to it. "The federal government and lander will call."
The paper emphasizes that the use of digital contact tracing is an important measure to support the rapid and complete tracing of contacts. The federal government has decided to allow the use of this app by the citizens according to the principle of "double voluntariness". European and german data protection rules were strictly adhered to. Only epidemiologically relevant contacts of the last three weeks were anonymously stored exclusively on the user's cell phone without recording the movement profile.
Previously, the greens had called on the federal government to create a legal basis for the planned corona-warn-app. The parliamentary group will submit a motion to this effect to the plenary session of the bundestag on thursday. At the same time, they want to know from the federal government whether security loopholes in the data donation app of the robert koch institute (RKI), which had been identified by the chaos computer club, have already been completely eliminated.
In their motion, the greens demand that the app's source code be open to public scrutiny. This is also in such a way planned, assured a speaker of the federal health ministry on wednesday in berlin.
The deputy chairman of the parliamentary group, konstantin von notz, commented on the motion that democracy is preserving itself in the crisis. "It is a learning, self-correcting system. We now need to make urgently needed corrections to protect fundamental rights and freedoms without jeopardizing what has been achieved."
The grunen pointed out that the chaos computer club (CCC) had found far-reaching security flaws in the RKI's data donation app. Among other things, the club had criticized the fact that, contrary to expectations, the RKI had not obtained the data of most users from their smartphones, but directly from the providers of the fitness trackers. If the app is simply uninstalled, this access remains, the CCC complained. The federal government should therefore draw the conclusion from the experience gained that when developing a tracing app, the source code should be made public and thus verifiable from the outset in order to make the app secure and increase trust and user acceptance.
On wednesday, the environmental protection organization greenpeace and the society for freedom (GFF) also called for the source text of the apps to be made public. This is the only way to ensure that the app complies with data protection laws and does not contain any hidden dangers, said pauline weller, project coordinator at the GFF.
FDP member of parliament manuel hoferlin explained that, regardless of the question of legal necessity, a law could help regain lost trust. "That was important for the success of the app."The chairman of the digital agenda committee in the bundestag stressed that development must finally move forward. "I have the feeling that the greens want to further delay the completion of the project with their demands, in order to bury it completely in the end. It was very unfortunate."
The afd, on the other hand, called on the federal government on wednesday to stop the development of a corona warning app. The planned contact detection via bluetooth is flawed, said afd member of parliament joana cotar in berlin. In addition, if the app does come, it must be ensured by law that "its non-use does not lead to any social discrimination" – for example, if employers only allow employees who use such an app access to their place of work.
