German telecom giant shares private data with government amid privacy fears
As the coronovirus crisis rages on, the first delivery was reportedly completed on Tuesday evening with a volume of five gigabytes.
In this June 6, 2011 file picture nursing stuff change their protective clothing after treating an E. coli patient at Asklepios Hospital in Hamburg-Altona, Germany.
The German telecommunications giant Telekom shared citizens’ cellphone data with the federal government agency, the Robert Koch Institute, in an attempt to prevent the spread of coronavirus, a German media report states.
According to the German daily, Tagesspiegel, Telekom wants to support the Robert Koch Institute in stemming the coronavirus pandemic by supplying cell phone data of German citizens.
The Robert Koch Institute is a federal government agency and research institute that deals with disease control and prevention.
The report suggests that the company has already made part of its customer data accessible to authorities in an anonymous form. A spokeswoman for Telekom confirmed the project to the German daily.
The first delivery was reportedly completed on Tuesday evening with a volume of five gigabytes. The spokeswoman said that the delivery of cell phone data will allow the German institute to track the movement of citizens and create a model to better understand the spread of the virus.
The cooperation between Telekom and the federal government agency raised questions about tracking people, privacy and data protection. However, the company claimed that the tracking of individuals is not possible.
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