Clarification: This isn't the official German contact tracing app.
You're talking about the older Corona Warn App which does similar things (and is generally considered too limited), but without direct data transfer to public health authorities. That's what the Luca app does.
Warn App is more for chance encounters tracking a person meeting other people.
Luca is more for checking in and out of stores and other locations.
[Edit: I stand by every single word, in case people doubt it.]
See https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/blob/ma... for details on how they do it.
It is as if a certain political class had this dream scenario of a new location registry of every move of the population. That they did not get via the CWA app, and since then they attack it. But Luca could create it.
Don't forget: This is Germany. Very low corruption at the lower level of society (you will never see a bribe in everyday life) and the basic organisation of the country seems competent. Incredible high amount of corruption and incompetence in the higher spheres - Wirecard, Cum Ex, Kohls schwarze Kassen, the governing party (CDU) currently has a scandal about members gaining millions via corruption when organising FFP2 masks, the country completely failed to contain Covid after the first more or less successful lockdown. Luca fits right in.
Not only politicians, I assume entities like Rundfunkbeitrag, Schufa, conuntless Inkasso will pay fortune to access such data.
> Very low corruption at the lower level of society [...] Incredible high amount of corruption and incompetence in the higher spheres
This is incredibly shocking for an newcomer to Germany. One swiftly hits the ceiling of 3-4k EUR net monthly and mortgage of 400-600k EUR with nowhere else to go, while watching enormous amounts of money being shuffled, fortunes hidden in idyllic villages, faceless dynasties owning chunks of industries, >1mln EUR apartments being purchased.
They already get your location (edit: I mean address here) when you register to the local administration (Anmeldebescheinigung).
My address is no secret, where I was last friday night (and tuesday morning) is.
I don't know why this new thing is your choice of how they'd get the data other than it being probably run as effectively as parler (edit: no data - gut feeling).
This plus Jehovah Witnesses who stalk intercom labels and decide that you are a perfect (victim) fit for their "community", and you have the full German experience. Copyright bullies, debt collection predators, religious lunatics.
That's not true, you can see lot of small bribes in normal day-to-day transactions. Almost every single technician I met (for internet installation, electricity, washing machine installation, etc. Even insurance brokers) offered me to pay them cash directly to get some benefits or falsify some recorded data.
Cash in order to avoid taxes, sure, that happens, but again: it's not common. Almost always I simply get a paper bill, without any attempt to skirt that.
It's not about me, I live a perfectly normal, boring life. I'm not the one asking for bribes, and I always rejected them (I'm way too paranoid regarding regulations to accept that kind of stuff).
Unreported work/income is estimated at about 10% of GDP: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/20063/umfrage...
I'm not from Germany, and do have a foreign name, I guess that may play a role.
That's a good point I hadn't considered.
But it's not "you have to pay more". More like "just so you know, I have access to this internal tool, you pay me now and this thing that isn't supposed to be possible due to your situation is now done".
(a)P offers, promises or gives a financial or other advantage to another person, and (b)P intends the advantage— (i)to induce a person to perform improperly a relevant function or activity, or (ii)to reward a person for the improper performance of such a function or activity.
The definition of improper broadly boils down to
> the test of what is expected is a test of what a reasonable person in the United Kingdom would expect in relation to the performance of the type of function or activity concerned.
Tipping at starbucks, or tipping a barman, or tipping a hotel member holding open a door, is certainly not what a reasonable person in the United Kingdom would expect.
"Tipping" is quite normal in the US. "Tipping" is quite normal in many African countries too. If you don't tip, you'll struggle to get any service (when you're running a project or whatever). It's a whole can of worms when normal activities in a country require a small payment.
Note also that if I tell my local project manager to make it happen, I'm on the hook for it if he "bribes" someone just as much as if I did it myself.
I'm sure the intent of the law is to prevent UK citizens from paying money to bypass bureaucracy (I had a very painful process importing some equipment at an airport once, they did not want to give me a receipt for the $1500 I wanted (and was supposed to) pay, they just wanted $50 to waive me through, or to stop me from paying an official $200k to let me build a pipe through a village, or whatever.
However it also means it's harder to make their project run smoothly in Guatemala ("Oh yes you can unload your lorry of course, this paperwork seems fine, but unfortunatly I need to check with my manager and he's currently out of town for 3 days. cough."), and means that you'll be subjected to a lengthy search at an airport (just long enough to miss your flight) for no reason unless you donate to their orphan fund or whatever.
I struggle to see the difference between that (which wouldn't be the case in the UK) and tipping a postman (which again I've never seen in the UK). The former I assume is illegal, the latter not, but it's not clear.
By enshrining English exceptionalism in UK law does seems rather off to me -- basically "treat all countries as if they were Britain, salute the Queen, and up the East India Company"
It comes down to the definition of "improper".
I see multiple probable origins on the net : - Coming for the german "schwarzarbeit" during end of 1st, in-between or during the occupation during 2nd WW and translated in French/Dutch from there. - Patron making employees works during the evening/night during the Middle albeit work was restricted only during day time.
I did not really find authoritative sources for the origin of the expression so take that whole bag of salt.
so it doesn't matter who developed it, it's being used as an official app (at least in some places).
"Official" means that the government has adopted it and given it a special status.
The federal government and state governments have endorsed the Corona Warn App. No special privileges in lockdown are connected to it. No special use by public health authorities is made of it.
Several state governments and municipal government have endorsed (and bought licenses to!) the Luca app. Special privileges in lockdown are connected with it, not everywhere, but in many places. Public health authorities are directly connected to Luca's servers.
If anything, the Luca app is more official than Corona Warn App where it's in use (several German states), and poised to become more important as more states introduce it.
The federal government actually owns the IP of the Corona Warn App. Luca is merely licensed by various state and local governments. You can’t expect the buyer of a software to assume responsibility for copyright violations. It’s like blaming someone for a (hypothetical) copyright violation in Windows because they sell a server that has Windows pre-installed.
Yes you can. Certainly true in the US. Liability depends on state law and in how the contract is written. If the buyer did not specifically make that carve out, a judge may end up deciding.
If the seller specifically carved that in, the buyer can be liable too (along with the seller).
This is why most government entities are difficult to contract with. They have buyers that insist in specific contract language. Govt entities have templates preapproved by lawyers to prevent this sort of thing coming back to haunt them. So if you want to do business with the govt, that's the hoops you will need to jump over.