To support the containment of the corona virus, the Swiss Government decided to allow testing of the Swiss proximity tracing app. At its meeting on May 13, 2020, the Federal Council adopted a temporary regulation for this pilot phase. The text of the temporary Government Ordinance can be found here.
“The “Ordinance on the Pilot Trial with the ‘Swiss Proximity Tracing System’ to notify people who were potentially exposed to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) ” is limited to June 30, 2020. It is based on the Data Protection Act and regulates the organization, operation, processed data and use of the proximity tracing app for the duration of the pilot phase.
The app is expected to be tested in the next weeks by employees of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Lausanne and Zurich, members of the army and employees of hospitals, and the federal and cantonal administrations. The app is also made available to other people and organizations so that they can uncover any technical defects and usability problems. The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner considers the upcoming trial operation of the app to be permissible under data protection law.
In its next meeting on May 20, the Federal Council intends to pass the legal basis for the proper operation of the app to Parliament. This message is to be discussed and adopted by Parliament in the summer session in June. With the proximity tracing app, potentially infected people can be warned at an early stage and the spread of the virus contained. Data protection is guaranteed at all times. The use of the app is voluntary. No location information from app users is used. All data of the app is continuously deleted after 21 days.” (Google translated text of the Swiss Government Press release).
Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, ICT4Peace and ZHET have published several publications on Proximity Tracing. Inter alia ICT4Peace and ZHET published a paper by Beatriz Botero Arcila on
A Human Centric Framework to Evaluate the Risks Raised by Contact-Tracing Applications