Germany says it will adopt a decentralized approach to digital contact tracing backed by Apple and Google, abandoning its home-grown alternative
Germany becomes the newest to sign on to #decentralized tracing apps! Check out the coverage via @Reuters https://www.reuters.com/... Andrus Ansip / @ansip_eu : Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections, backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries. https://www.reuters.com/... Carl Bildt / @carlbildt : Switzerland, Austria and Estonia seems to be in the lead in Europe to develop a decentralized tracking app that can help us in these COVID19 times. https://www.reuters.com/... Mark Horsley / @markhorsleyuk : GERMANY CHANGED COURSE ... on Sunday. It's now “backing a ‘decentralized’ approach to digital contact tracing” Their previous preference was criticised “as opening the way to state surveillance.” Mmm...wonder which type our revered leader - Cummings - will prefer...?!? https://twitter.com/... @jwildeboer : The Palantir/PEPP-PT approach now seems to be a failed, old-school lobby project. This gives me hope. Things ARE changing. https://twitter.com/... Marcel Salath / @marcelsalathe : “We will back a decentralized architecture that will only store contacts on devices.” Great move by Germany 🇩🇪👏 https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.com/...
ReutersDouglas Busvine
Context & Ripple Effects
Berlin had been backing the home-grown centralized effort associated with PEPP-PT, even as the EU issued interoperability guidelines and said it would scrutinize Apple and Google's proposed APIs for compatibility. Sunday's reversal ends that standoff: Germany joins the decentralized camp alongside Switzerland, Austria and Estonia, which Carl Bildt flagged as Europe's early movers.
First-order effects
Germany's own tracing-app development work pivots to the Apple-Google API, and the country's earlier centralized design — the PEPP-PT lineage — loses its largest prospective adopter.
The decision hands Apple and Google de facto approval over how European public-health authorities can run exposure notification on their own operating systems.
Second-order effects
Other governments running parallel home-grown apps face the same math: the UK subsequently abandoned its own app approach for the Google-Apple model, confirming Germany was not an outlier.
With the decentralized model dominant, the European Commission's interoperability push — Germany, Italy, Ireland, Denmark and others testing cross-border app compatibility — becomes a layer built on top of two US companies' API rather than a sovereign alternative.
If the pattern holds, pandemic-era health infrastructure entrenches platform dependence: national sovereignty over contact tracing narrows to policy choices within constraints set by Apple and Google.
The trend: National contact-tracing programs are consolidating around the Apple-Google decentralized API as a de facto global standard, trading data-sovereignty ambitions for guaranteed reach across iOS and Android.
Both Italy and Germany have changed approach on smartphone contact tracing, backing a better solution by Apple and Google, who may be next? https://uk.reuters.com/...
Now this is interesting: Germany, one of the most aggressive defenders of digital privacy, abandoned their homegrown contact tracing app because it was *less* privacy-aware than Apple and Google's solution. The key differentiator? Decentralization. https://www.reuters.com/...
The way to go is now clear. Also Germany adopts decentralised smartphone contact tracing. Apple's iPhone would under the proposed setup only work properly with decentralized protocols such as #DP3T, which has been backed by Switzerland, Austria and Estonia https://www.reuters.com…
Germany joins Austria, Finland & Switzerland in using Apple & Google technology for anonymised contact tracing based on mobile phone technology. This makes perfect sense which means UK will probably not support it. https://www.reuters.com/...
Reports today that Germany is shelving plans for a surveillance-heavy centralised contact tracing app in favour of a decentralised model. Excellent decision and a necessary first step towards protecting human rights in this delicate and complex process. https://www.reuters.com/..…
i remain convinced we're doing a bad job parsing out the stakes in this battle between privacy and public health, posed by the arrival of contact tracing apps (that dont actually contact trace by design) https://www.reuters.com/...
Countries are rushing to develop apps to give a detailed picture of the risk of catching the coronavirus, as the chain of infection is proving hard to break because it can be spread by those showing no symptoms https://www.reuters.com/...
We are excited to see another step towards privacy-first #COVID19 intervention — Germany becomes the newest to sign on to #decentralized tracing apps! Check out the coverage via @Reuters https://www.reuters.com/...
Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections, backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries. https://www.reuters.com/...
Switzerland, Austria and Estonia seems to be in the lead in Europe to develop a decentralized tracking app that can help us in these COVID19 times. https://www.reuters.com/...
GERMANY CHANGED COURSE ... on Sunday. It's now “backing a ‘decentralized’ approach to digital contact tracing” Their previous preference was criticised “as opening the way to state surveillance.” Mmm...wonder which type our revered leader - Cummings - will prefer...?!? https://tw…
“We will back a decentralized architecture that will only store contacts on devices.” Great move by Germany 🇩🇪👏 https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.com/...