[Tomte]

This is an official tracing app in several states in Germany, and probably soon in all of Germany.

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.]

[onli]

Luca is a cash grab, and maybe more sinister. Since the CWA - the official contact tracing app - switched to not collecting a central database that could be misused we have conservative politicians firing against it. "We give too much importance to data privacy", of course without being able to mention a single feature that the privacy protecting app is missing. Now Luca arrived, with some semi-prominent advocates, and you see conservative politicians shoving millions into that abomination of proprietary, data collecting and now evidently copyright infringing garbage.

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.

[durnygbur]

> dream scenario of a new location registry of every move of the population

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.

[dgellow]

> Rundfunkbeitrag

They already get your location (edit: I mean address here) when you register to the local administration (Anmeldebescheinigung).

[zeepzeep]

Address != location.

My address is no secret, where I was last friday night (and tuesday morning) is.

[dgellow]

Sure, but the Rundfunkbeitrag has no need for your current location, they just need to know which apartment you're registered at.

[durnygbur]

If they decide that you don't pay the license fee (doesn't matter if you really do), your live location will be beyond useful. They absolutely have the budget to implement the most invasive and abusive debt collection solution.

[rkachowski]

They somehow get this before Anmeldung, I lived in my apartment for 2 years before officially registering and received Rundfunkbeitrag letters + frivoulous copyright infringement notices (from a previous apartment).

[durnygbur]

> 2 years before officially registering and received Rundfunkbeitrag letters + frivoulous copyright infringement notices

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.

[dgellow]

> (you will never see a bribe in everyday life)

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.

[rob74]

Er... do you mean offering to work "off the record" without paying taxes for it ("Schwarzarbeit")? That't tax evasion, not corruption, but yeah, that's pretty common, even in Germany.

[notagoodidea]

That's interesting that in German, Dutch and French we will talk about "black work" (schwarzarbeit (DE), travail au noir (FR), zwart werk (NL)) meaning undeclared/unreported work.

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.

[consp]

AFAIK you are correct. Before the first world war taxation was different in most of those countries and work was not taxed directly at all otherwise only in war years (i.e. the first world war) so the meaning is new. There was no need for a word for something which did not exist.

[dgellow]

No, I mean someone offering you to give them some cash to ignore some rules (or not report what they should), or to actually change recorded data in a way that benefits you. A clear case: insurance brokers who offer you to change some records so that you can get a private insurance in cases where you shouldn't.

[chefkoch]

I'm born here and lived here all my life and this has never happened to me.

[luckylion]

Same for the first two, but not the last. It's somewhat common for craftsmen to work "off the books" on smaller private contracts. It's a trade-off because obviously it's hard to claim liability when you have no proof they even worked on it and no contract specifying the work to be done. It's even more common in larger construction projects.

Unreported work/income is estimated at about 10% of GDP: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/20063/umfrage...

[dgellow]

That's not too surprising IMHO, I would expect this to be more visible to foreigners. I myself have never seen any type of low-level corruption in my home country but I learnt that also happens quite often, it's just not too visible if you don't know where to look at.

I'm not from Germany, and do have a foreign name, I guess that may play a role.

[chefkoch]

I wouldn't call this corruption, this sounds more like some one tried to fuck you over.

[dgellow]

I mean, accepting a bribe or offering one is a way to fuck someone over.

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".

[Tomte]

> I would expect this to be more visible to foreigners.

That's a good point I hadn't considered.

[tormeh]

Some handymen tried to double charge me, in cash of course, but that's the only thing I've experienced. The stats say 20% of Germans report having been asked for a bribe at some point in their lives. That's not great, but not terrible either.

[nyir]

Source for the 20%? Anecdotally I've never heard anyone being asked for one, other corrupt behaviour though for sure, things regarding land ownership, or zoning violations.

[iso1631]

Most common bribes I see is when I go to some countries and I am expected to pay an undisclosed fee to get better service. My anti-bribery training mentioned how these are often quite normal, and dressed up in terms like "facilitation fee", or "tip", but that if I were to pay such a fee I'd be breaking UK law.

[galangalalgol]

Interesting! So you can't tip restaurant servers legally? Most point of sale machines for restaurants ask you to select a tip from a list of several standard optiins that usually puts 20% in the middle to make it seem normal, and like 15% is reserved as a mild complaint. So its not exactly undiaclosed, you can guess pretty well what it will be.

[iso1631]

The UK act says I (P) committe an offence if

(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"

[galangalalgol]

Does it matter that the tip is given after the service insteaf of before? My kids yoga teacher has a "pay what you can or what it is worth to you" scale so disadvantaged kids can come. I think of tips kind of like that.

[Tomte]

You run in strange circles. I have never ever experienced such a thing. What benefits do they offer? A faster appointment?

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.

[dgellow]

> You run in strange circles.

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).

[makepanic]

The cwa app will support event registration in the next version too.

See https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/blob/ma... for details on how they do it.

[zeepzeep]

They always said they could have easily integrated Luca like features but no, ofc we need to pick the option with millions of marketing money behind it instead of waiting for a privacy focused version.

[dorgo]

Afaik, privacy focused version is not possible without changing legislation. All apps would do check-ins anonymous if not for legislation.

[locallost]

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. Where I live, they recently said they will open shops for a couple of days, and you can get in if either 1) you received a vaccine 2) you use the "Luca" app

so it doesn't matter who developed it, it's being used as an official app (at least in some places).

[estaseuropano]

Matters in that its not the government but a private company violating copyright.

[Tomte]

The other "official app" ("Corona Warn App") is also not developed by the government or any government-employed developers. That distinction is no distinction.

"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.

[realityking]

There is a big difference between commissioning a product (work for hire) and buying a product that has been already developed.

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.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

>>> You can’t expect the buyer of a software to assume responsibility for copyright violations

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.