The Corona App Discussion

There's this interesting technology story that is progressing around Germany this week.

So in the midst of all this Corona business....some folks felt that if you just tracked folks....you could quickly halt an outbreak.

How?  Well.....you'd put an App on each smartphone, and using it's capability.....you'd track a guy or gal.  If he came up with the virus today (via a test), then you'd backtrack and check his trail.  You'd then call up folks and 'tell' (force) them to have a test now.

So making this App apparently wasn't that difficult.  Then Apple and Google both stepped in....to offer support to the idea.  But they had one central theme.....all this personal data must stay on the smartphone.  They didn't want to volunteer any central data storage capability.

All of this lead to changing the Bluetooth protocols....so that each phone would recognize another phone (say within two meters).  The biggest part of this deal....it couldn't be a drain on the battery.  Folks are mad enough that a phone requires almost daily recharging now, but to suggest that your phone might be dead already by 3 PM? 

But in stepped the various government agencies (not just Germany), who said that a central data storage is the only way to gather and calculate problems.  Both Google and Apple said 'no'.....that's not us and we won't go into this type of detail. In essence, you are inviting massive misuse of data. 

Imagine a dope dealer in Frankfurt, who has concluded forty-four sales today, and now gets caught on number forty-five.  The cops?  They ask a judge if he can review the Corona-location data, and find out who the forty-four previous customers were for this guy.

Imagine some far-left protester having damaged a police car, and there's an additional capability in the mix.....where car can 'see' people within two meters, and store that data on a central server.  So the cops show up twelve hours later at the guy's apartment and start asking about his travels today, and if he attempted to burn a police car.

Personally, I don't blame Apple or Google....I wouldn't want to be the 'bad' guy in this game.  To achieve a data server now?  Lets be honest here.....the German national government has been famous for taking on enormous projects and royally screwing up in a five-star way.  I can see them allocating half-a-billion Euro and spending a year trying to build some central server, and then having some legal change at the end.....forcing them to dump the server, and having wasted all of the money on this project.