The longed-for relaxation of the current measures has an elementary prerequisite. The virus must not spread exponentially again. An app can help to automatically record (“track”) contacts that are too close. If a user tests positive, the potential chain of infection can be traced at the push of a button. This means that all contact persons for the infected person can be quickly isolated.

That’s the theory. In practice, delicate technical, security and legal questions arise. The design of the app depends on the one hand on its effectiveness and on the other hand on data protection. The less and the more decentralized data is stored, the more data protection is guaranteed. The fewer people participate, the more ineffective the system is. Therefore, if you want to legally mandate the use of the app, fundamental rights are at stake.

Rector Meinhard Lukas speaks to the following researchers at the JKU on this topic:

• Univ.-Prof. Dr. Rene Mayrhofer, Institute of Networks and Security and LIT Secure and Correct Systems Lab; formerly Head of the Android Platform Security team at Google
• Univ.-Prof. Dr. Manuel Wimmer, Institute for Information Systems - Software Engineering
• Univ.- Prof. Dr. Andreas Janko, Institute for Constitutional Law and Political Science