German authorities are coming under fire for abusing a COVID tracing app to investigate a case, Deutsche Welle reports.
The case concerned the death under mysterious circumstances of a man in the city of Mainz. While tring to track down witnesses, police managed to persuade local health authorities to release data from the "Luca" app, in order to contact people who had been at the same restaurant as the deceased shortly before he died.
21 potential witnesses were then contacted by police.
Once the story broke, public prosecutors in Mainz announced that they had launched an inquiry and would be ensuring "that the relevant data will not be used further."
The app's developers, culture4life, sharply criticized the actions of authorities in Mainz.
"We condemn the abuse of Luca data collected to protect against infections," the company said in a statement, adding that they often receive requests for data from law enforcement which they always deny.