PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) – A standoff between the two largest nations in the European Union and Silicon Valley escalated on Friday as Apple and Google rebuffed demands by France and Germany to back their approach to using smartphone technology to trace coronavirus infections.
FILE PHOTO: A woman wearing a protective mask uses her mobile phone, as a coronavirus outbreak continues to grow in northern Italy, in Turin, Italy, February 27, 2020. REUTERS/Massimo Pinca
Countries are rushing to develop apps to assess the risk that one person can infect another with the coronavirus, helping to isolate those who could spread the COVID-19 disease.
In Europe, most countries have chosen short-range Bluetooth ‘handshakes’ between devices as the best approach, dismissing the alternative of using location data pursued by some countries in Asia as intrusive.
But a rift has opened up between countries led by France and Germany that want to hold personal data on a central server, and others that…
Source Reuters Tech News
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