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Content type: Examples
FullScreen Research claims that in the competitive German food delivery market, Lieferando uses automation to monitor its employees and that Wolt violates labour laws by paying couriers in cash and employing them illegally A former supervisor with Lieferando says that the system flags up abnormalities for a team of watching agents, who see each courier's exact location and are supposed to ask drivers the reason for delays. Lieferando denies that it illegally controls drivers'…
Content type: Examples
The Argentinian startup Nippy offers delivery drivers access to rest stops including free coffee, phone charging stations, and toilets in return for downloading its app and allowing it to sell the data the app collects to partners in insurance, financial services, and telecommunications. The result is to give companies like Mastercard and Movistar insight into gig workers' income in the areas where Nippy operates in Argentina, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. The services Nippy's rest stops…
Content type: Examples
German data protection authorities have ruled that the use of Microsoft Office 365 in schools is not compliant with GDPR, citing a lack of transparency around how and where Microsoft processes and stores student data as well as the potential for third-party access. German federal and state data protection authorities have been looking at how to improve Office 365 for two years but deems changes Microsoft has made insufficient to bring the software into compliance.
https://www.computerweekly.…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International responded to the consultation on the proposed data protection bill (the "Bill") to reform the current law 25.326
We welcome the continued efforts by Argentina to provide protections for the right to privacy, already enshrined in the Constitution of Argentina. PI welcomes the main objective of the Bill, namely to regulate the processing of personal data in order to guarantee fully the exercise of data subjects’ rights in accordance with Article 43 of the Constitution (…
Content type: Examples
Germany’s contact tracing system is thought to have been critical in controlling the COVID-19 outbreak, especially given superspreader events such as infections in meat packing plants. Each of Germany’s 16 federal states is responsible for health, and together with the national Robert Koch Institute they support authorities at city or council level, who are responsible for outbreak investigation and management, including contact tracing.
The country dubbed COVID-19 a notifiable disease early,…
Content type: Examples
A study describes the data transmitted to backend servers by the Google/Apple based contact tracing (GAEN) apps in use in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark and finds that the health authority client apps are generally well-behaved from a privacy point of view, although the Irish, Polish, Danish, and Latvian apps could be improved in this respect. However, the study also finds that the Google Play Services component of the apps contacts Google servers as often as every 20 minutes…
Content type: Examples
The German health minister, Jens Spahn, said the country required advice from the country’s ethics council before it could use the millions of antibody tests it had procured from the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche to help determine how freely people could move around the country. Spahn cited the risk that people would try to get themselves infected if immunity passports appeared to promise greater freedom.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-germany-antibodies/armed-with-…
Content type: Examples
At the end of March, jointly organised by the Robert Koch Institute (Germany’s public health body), the German Centre for Infection Research, the Institute for Virology at Berlin’s Charite hospital, and blood donation services, researchers planned to begin conducting blood tests among the general public in order to determine how many people test positive for antibodies to the coronavirus. Gerard Krause, head of epidemiology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, and Brauinschweig,…
Content type: Examples
Germany’s “Corona-Warn” contact tracing app amassed 6.5 million users (7.8% of the German population) in the first 24 hours after its June 16 launch despite setbacks that included disputes over data privacy and functionality. The app was developed in six weeks by a team of developers and engineers from Deutcsche Telekom and SAP and is built on the Apple-Google notification framework. In a poll conducted by ARD around the time of the app’s launch, 42% of Germans said they would use the app,…
Content type: Video
The incorporation of new technologies to electoral processes is a phenomenon with a global and exponential growth. Despite its benefits, online campaigning is not without challenges, and can pose threats to transparency and equity in electoral competition. Given the role of elections as foundational pillars of the democratic system and a key gateway for the exercise of fundamental civil rights, these implications must be assessed with care and through specific tools.
We at PI, together…
Content type: Examples
Local health authorities in Germany have relied on human contact tracers since the country confirmed its first COVID-19 cases early in 2020, and say that doing so has helped the country keep its death rate comparatively low even with a less restrictive lockdown than many other countries. Germany aims to have 16,000 contract tracers overall, or five for every 25,000 people. Tracing involves phoning each newly-diagnosed patient and asking their movements; those who have been in close contact for…
Content type: Examples
Three days after announcing Germany would adopt the centralised Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) standard for contact tracing, the country's chancellery minister Helge Braun and health minister Jens Spahn announced they would instead use the decentralised approach backed by Apple, Google, and other European countries. While both standards rely on Bluetooth connections between nearby phones, PEPP-PT would have required Apple's cooperation to implement, and the company…
Content type: Examples
Germany's federal agency responsible for disease control and prevention, the Robert Koch Institute, has teamed up with the health technology start-up Thryve to develop an app called Corona-Datenspende ("data donation") that works with a variety of smartwatches and fitness wristbands. The app is designed to use the device's sensors to collect user data, and includes algorithms to it to spot symptoms linked to COVID-19 and help predict the spread and containment of the virus. More than 50,000…
Content type: Examples
On March 24 the German Bundestag passed a comprehensive amendment to the Infection Protection Act that authorises the Federal Ministry of Health to implement measures for medical care without the consent of the Federal Council. These include the ability to impose curfews and travel restrictions, override patent protection for medical products, and issue ordinances creating other exceptions to the law. The Federal Data Protection Commissioner criticised the proposals because he doubted whether…
Content type: Examples
The former Big Brother reality TV star Matías Schrank was arrested by the Cybercrime division of the Misiones provincial police, after publishing tweets that claimed that Eduardo Rovira, the president of the Misiones legislature, had contracted COVID-19 on his recent trip to Thailand and was reckless in not immediately going into quarantine but continuing to hold meetings with other high-level government officials. Schrank was charged under Article. 211 of the Criminal Code, which…
Content type: Examples
The Argentinian company Urbetrack is developing a "Cuidate en casa" (Take Care of Yourself at Home) app that it will pitch to government agencies throughout the country. The goal is to contribute to remediating the health crisis by helping enforce quarantine. The plan is that users will download the app and complete a form with their personal details as chosen by the local authority. The app will then generate a "radial geofence" defined by the local authority, within which the user must stay.…
Content type: Examples
The Argentinian Ministry of Transport, working with the state-owned satellite company ARSAT and the telecoms regulator,ENACOM, proposed to the Executive on 31 March 2020 a platform that uses cell tower data to track people on public transport and ensure they comply with quarantine laws. By 28 March, the Ministry of Security had detained 13,006 people for violating the rules. The government believes that although compliance is high, it will deteriorate if quarantine is extended much longer…
Content type: Examples
The San Francisco-based big data company Grandata has created a heat map to show which areas of Argentina are best complying with the quarantine lockdown. Grandata used an "anonymised" dataset collected from apps that provide third parties with geolocation information. The heat map shows if an individual has moved more than 100 meters from the place where they spend most of their time, apparently without taking into account the socio-economic contexts of different cities, where individuals…
Content type: Examples
Argentina's Public Prosecutor's Office will start installing an app on the smartphones of those who violate government-ordered quarantine in the cities of Santa Fé and Rosario. The app will be installed by the province's Criminal Investigation Agency to track those who are under criminal investigation for violating quarantine. The app will send reports to the the MPA investigation office and coordinated by the Attorney General's Office. Individuals will be required to sign a document…
Content type: Examples
On March 23, Argentina's immigration agency, Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM), announced that anyone arriving in the country would be required to install the free COVID-19 Ministry of Health app on their phone for 14 days to ensure they comply with quarantine rules in order to protect the population. The Office of the Chief of Staff had instructed the DNM to adopt this policy when it launched the app, also on March 23. Since launch, the number of unnecessary permissions the app requests…
Content type: Examples
Researchers at Germany's Robert Koch Institute and Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute are working on an app that uses Bluetooth connections between smartphones and is compliant with GDPR to anonymously save the distance and duration of contact between people on the smartphone to make it possible to digitally reconstruct infection chains. The idea is being copied from Singapore's TraceTogether app, which detects other users who have also installed the app. If someone tests positive, they can…
Content type: Examples
The self-testing web app issued by Argentina's Secretariat of Public Innovation asks for national ID number, email and phone as mandatory fields in order to submit the test. The Android version requires numerous permissions: calendar, contacts, geolocation data (both network-based and GPS), microphone, camera, full network access; change audio settings, run at startup; draw over other apps, prevent device from sleeping.
Sources:
https://www.argentina.gob.ar/coronavirus/app
https://play.…
Content type: Examples
The free app Testeate, developed by the company Adrómeda in collaboration with the Association of Information and Communication Technologies of Mar del Plata (ATICMA) and the Chamber of Software and Computer Services Companies of Argentina (CESSI) and launched in the Municipality of General Pueyrredón on March 26, is intended to enable direct information exchange between Argentina's National Ministry of Health and the population by offering constantly updated information in any city and…
Content type: Examples
The German mobile operator Deutsche Telekom announced in a press conference on RKI Live that it had passed on, anonymised, its users' movement data to the Robert-Koch Institute to study the extent to which the population would follow the government's restrictions. RKI president Lothar Wieler said this data is also available for purchase, but was given to RKI at no charge.
Source: https://frask.de/coronavirus-deutscher-mobilfunkbetreiber-gibt-bewegungsdaten-weiter/
Content type: Examples
A Hamburg geotracking startup called Ubilabs is working with the Hannover School of Medicine on a data analysis platform that could track people who have tested positive for the coronavirus and their contacts, Der Tagesspiegel reported on Tuesday; this type of tracking would require individuals' consent to have a legal basis for processing.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/11/technology/11reuters-health-coronavirus-privacy-explainer.html
Content type: Examples
A review of European privacy laws considers whether the tracking and monitoring methods China used to shut down the COVID-19 epidemic are in compliance with GDPR. The French data protection authority CNIL says employers are not allowed to take mandatory temperature readings from employees or visitors or require them to fill out compulsory medical questionnaires. Italy passed emergency legislation requiring anyone who has recently stayed in an at-risk area to notify health authorities. Germany…
Content type: Examples
A group of independent developers in Argentina started CoTrack, a public crowdsourced effort to develop an app to track and slow the spread of the virus. CoTrack registers each user's geographic movements and looks for times when they are close to people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19. When there is a confirmed case, a user who has the app can share their data with the community so others can automatically be notified that they should take precautions. The Ministry of Health for the area…
Content type: Examples
An Argentinian crowdsourcing website is collecting information on flights with passengers who were reported as testing positive for COVID-19. Users are asked to enter their email address and the date, airline, and flight number, and tick a box to indicate that someone on their flight was infected. No information is provided on who operates the site, but the terms and conditions indicate that it uses open data flows alongside the collected data.
Source: http://www.checkmyvirusrisk.com/CO/…
Content type: Examples
A 19-year-old medical student was raped and drowned in the River Dresiam in October 2016. The police identified the accused by a hair found at the scene of the crime. The data recorded by the health app on his phone helped identify his location and recorded his activities throughout the day. A portion of his activity was recorded as “climbing stairs”, which authorities were able to correlate with the time he would have dragged his victim down the river embankment, and then climbed…
Content type: Key Resources
In the lead up to the 2017 German federal elections, there was much debate about the benefits and dangers of data analytics for political purposes. There were some controversies concerning the use of data and the lack of information provided by political parties also raised concerns.