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Over zealous interpretation of data privacy laws is leading vaccination workers to in Lower Saxony state of Germany to guess people's age by their names. The Deutsche Post database used for finding names of people over 80 years only partially includes date of birth. Health ministry of Lower Saxony admits that not all people will receive letters for vaccination who are over 80.  Official records are held by 5283 local authorites across the country. Once again say former federal commissioner for data protection and other data protection officials, "the false impression is created that data protection is the highest good and prevents necessary measures." Post office data should not be used and minimal access ensured for vaccination purposes with a little common sense.

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Lufthansa's CEO announced in the early days following the crash that pilot Lubitz was "100 percent" fit to fly. Kulish and Clark point to the denial at Lufthansa and some other airlines about the need for airlines to have a clear understanding about the psychological condition of pilots. This exceptional report with contributions by a team of NYT reporters tells the story of Lubitz and the airline industry's lack of effective screening. The lack of systematic screening of pilots for psychological issues was raised by the UN's Civil Aviation Organization in 2012, and by the European Commission's Aviation Safety Agency focussing on strict data protection rules with Germany in November 2014. A culture of privacy in Germany following the experience of pervasive intrusions into privacy by the Nazis and the Soviet backed GDR government in East Germany, and strict data protection rules, create a special situation in Germany of being reluctant to pass on information or delve into personal records. The head of Lufthansa's department of aviation psychology, says he would not have accepted the pilot Lubitz if he had known about his medical problems of depression before or during the training period....

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As the pandemic continues to spread and numbers grow with reopening of the economy the question remains -what can we learn from other countries positive experience in controlling spread? Here the Times provides the example of German contact tracing- chancellor Merkel has emphasized that a lot depends on "total" contact tracing, and contact tracing "above all else." Germany's experience is that even if you don't get everything right, you make an honest effort with everything you've got and do it early it makes a real difference. Some of the offices across Germany are stretched and short of staff but they have been working since the beginning of March, sometimes in the early days 7 days a week. Only 33% or one third of the offices throughout Germany for contact tracing have the required 5 person team for every 20,000 people, and 35% are overstretched or at their limit, according to one survey. No apps, just a low tech effort with people from the state administrations who were not working during lockdown trying doing something else, or volunteers. Mainly using the phone, talking to people and tracing the contact chain of people testing positive. Putting this information on the computer with a central database.  The Berlin office has 115 workers and has tracked down every one of 666 virus cases it was given. Because of privacy concerns at the Munich office sometimes even the patient's name is not given and office staff have to locate the name and the person. It requires dedication, flexibility and above all resilience, says Harold Rau, the deputy Mayor of the Cologne office, cited in this Times report. The doctor alerts the local office with a test result. The office calls the person and finds out who he has been in contact with for the last 14 days. Then the people who were in contact with are grouped based on the directness of contact, face to face, so on. These people are asked to quarantine for 14 days, sometimes with the rest of their household. They get daily call to find out how their doing for symptoms. The effort goes back to Robert Koch in the 1892 cholera epidemic in Hamburg. Robert Koch, microbe hunter in Germany, was called in after the epidemic spread from Moscow. It devastated Moscow and Tokyo, but Hamburg suffered far less about 8605 deaths as a result of the contact tracing and strict closing off quarantining of affected chains after isolating them, closing off affected parts of the city. Bit by bit the cholera epidemics sparks were put out before turning into flames, says Koch. In the current pandemic Germany has suffered 8241 deaths and 178,000 confirmed cases. So far this is in line with the cholera epidemic in Hamburg 1892, and this for all of Germany. And it is not just affluent nations that can do this. where there is a will there is a way. In Kerala state in southwestern India, similar efforts have worked to limit spread  with even better results than Germany. ...

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Germany has shown that low tech contact tracing efforts work- no apps needed, a phone, a desktop computer with a centralized database, and most important the human relations skills of the person doing the calls. The  sensitivity to the situation facing each person being called, being able to talk to the person in the language they speak in a multilingual environment such as California, is shown here. A 40 person team operates in San Francisco consisting of public health officials, clinicians, medical students and librarians. They call the contacts of people with coronavirus, arrange tests, and as needed send packages of food and medicines to hotel rooms or homes. Every call is expected to last 15 minutes but all sorts of questions are handled.  English and Spanish are used. Here one of the persons doing the contact tracing says she does not use apps, just an open source software used in the fight against Ebola. Definitely low tech, no waiting, get going is the message to every city in the world. She says apps software such as what Google and Apple are putting out can tell you whether the person went to some place, but cannot tell you more about that person, cannot tell you about problems the person is having being tested, and how they are having difficulty providing for families. One of the big lessons from Germany and efforts such as this one in San Francisco, and in other places such as Paris, Singapore, Taiwan, is that there is a complex nature to contact tracing that cannot be solved by tech. In fact the best thing to do is to get started immediately, with a phone and a database on a computer, as long as you have a person who has the motivation and skills, empathy with people, a lot can be done. Waiting for apps is a dangerous waste of time is shown by the low tech German experience, and the experience in other places. Most important is starting immediately. The example shown here of working with migrant workers in contact tracing shows in the most vulnerable places it is these human relations skills that count, that no tech app can do. It requires detective skills to find out and get people to share their history of movements and contacts for 14 days . In Singapore crowded dormitories house 300,000 of 1.4 million migrant workers. Singapore using an app also but its use is secondary. Apps don't work in many situations but fail in the most critical situations such as these dormitories and other eccentric or atypical situations such as faced by South Korea with religious groups and gay communities, elderly people in Europe, that generate the worst dangers of spread and need to be cluster isolated quickly. Human contact tracing has a history of being an effective method and was used in China and South Korea during the 2003 SARS epidemic. More countries need to adopt the method used in Asia and in Germany, particularly Britain, the U.S., France and India. It is OK that Britain's NHS and India's national government with Aarogya Setu app have put out their own apps which balance privacy concerns with the need to act immediately and cover the entire country, but the hard slog of human contact tracing teams in each district is indispensable. This is why the former Health minister in Britain calls it Britain's national mission to do this. Speed is key- putting together teams across the country in every district from skilled volunteers or government workers, and pulling together the phone and a centralized database on a computer as basic equipment. The fact that this is easily doable and people with human skills needed can always be recruited as they have been in Germany- from public officials in local government who are less busy in lockdowns, medical students, clinicians, volunteers, people from different professions- makes it inexcusable not to learn from others experience and get going. Just Do It. You want to reopen business, professions, offices and public services- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to prevent spread of the virus- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to limit damage to the economy and get the recovery going- Just Do It, it makes this possible. People of all shades of opinion can agree on this- its the only thing that works, even when there is a lack of enough proper accurate testing. ...

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The use of apps and tech based solutions have been largely ineffective in doing effective contact tracing and testing to isolate people with coronavirus. Epidemiologists question its effectiveness when it does not lead to people isolating themselves to prevent spread.  A major problem is lack of confidence in the tech based solutions. 27 states in the U.S. have no apps or are not developing one.  Apps do not use the entire set of tech resources available because of dilution from concerns about privacy. Another major problem is that there is no national approach. California, Washington and Oregon have a pilot program on the Google-Apple system, Delaware and Pennsylvania launched an app in September from Irish developer NearForm. New York and New Jersey started with a NearForm app in October. States using apps are doing this without much conviction that this is a tool that will work to do effective contact tracing and testing to isolate infected persons. For this reason one sees pilots and launches this late in the coronavirus pandemic. Early efforts stumbled.  The UK and French apps also proved ineffective. Germany opted for low tech solution that proved surprisingly effective in the first wave of the coronavirus. Germany relied on teams from state employees which used a national database, personal computers and phones to call individuals who needed to be isolated and tracked. Asian countries have less concern for privacy leading to apps being more effective. Even here low tech solutions with national database and teams of people with personal computers and phones calling and making personal contact including visiting homes has worked better than apps. Human relations skills to reassure people affected by coronavirus, legwork to contact personally at homes and check up, and persuasion to have people isolate have been more effective than app based impersonal tech solutions. ...

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The Pirate Party was founded in Sweden by software enrepreneur Rick Falkvinge in 2006, with the idea of changing copyright and patent law and protecting online privacy. The Pirate Party has gained support in Germany. It won 10% of the vote in recent Berlin elections and is expected to do the same in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in April 2012.

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Under a new law going into effect on Oct. 1, 2017 and supported by Angela Merkel's government, all social networks will be required to delete within 24 hours "all illegal content." This is an effort to take immediate action against hate speech, libel and other illegal content. Companies could be fined upto $57 million. Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas said "we cannot accept that social networks ignore our laws." Mr. Maas says the voluntary effort setup earlier had not worked as the social media companies were too slow. The law now means the networks will devote more resources, with Facebook increasing the staff for this purpose doubling it almost from 4500 to 7500, showing that the problem had not been addressed the way it needed to be. The new law details 22 sections of the criminal code that social networks need to enforce. Including laws banning libel, character defamation, hate speech, insults against religions, offensive statements and privacy violations. Britain's May and France's Macron have also called the efforts of the networks insufficient. A similar law in the U.S. before the 2016 election could have saved the country from many of the problems arising from illegal content being posted, including damage to the image of the U.S., inciting deep divisions, racial tensions, hate rhetoric and defamation leading to coarsening of public dialogue and debate.  During 2016 many European leaders were exposed to hate speech including Angela Merkel. The social networks were slow to respond and did not take their civic duty as seriously as they should have considering the grave damage to the social and political fabric of the U.S. and the European Union countries. The governments also took time to act, studying the problem carefully before taking action leading to further damage, one reason the current legislation was passed quickly and decisively. Experts say other countries will act following the German example to preserve civil dialogue and strengthen democracy. ...

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This report in The Times points out that the world of work is changing as employers reduce office space and shift workers to work from home with some limited time spent in the office environment to link up with colleagues. This report cites a survey that shows 45% of companies are saying they do not need 70% of office space.  The Times has been published for one year with employees not coming into the office. The Reach which publishes the Daily Mirror and Daily Express in UK has cut office space and 75% of employees in future will work full time from home. Banks are also making that move- HSBC is getting rid of 40% of global office space, Lloyds Bank is getting rid of 20% of office space. With these changes comes the question when did this idea of working out large offices start? It started in 1906 with the Larkin Administration Building in New York. It was based on the ideas of Frederick Taylor's scientific management ideas and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to recreate something like a factory floor. Later by 1970 office spaces shifted to privacy with cubicles and private offices. It then went through another transformation with a shift to open offices as in Japan in the period around 2000 which is making a comeback today. This time open offices with social distancing space for a smaller number of people coming in for a short time to the office. Simon Nixon says employers should not simply look for savings as the main motivation but at the broader picture- wellness of employees, guiding employees on how to structure work and space at home, associations in this field should also provide guidance and get involved in the transformation of office space. Productivity goes with wellness, and happy employees who have kept wellness in mind will be more productive asset for the employers. Lyrarc recommends office workers read articles on the German approach to office work called "Feierabend," which sets clearly demarcated lines between work and recreational activities that renew one for work the next day. Feierabend literally means "end of the day" in German and a specific time say 5.00 pm cuts off the days work and sets time aside for breaking away from work to take a bike ride or a walk in the garden for instance.   ...

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The U.S. National Security Agency is going through four separate reviews- one by a White House internal review team, by the Review Group for Intelligence and Communications Technology setup by president Obama in August 2013, by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board setup in 2004, and by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sources say the head of the agency Gen. Alexander offered to resign but this was not accepted because it would be seen as a win for Snowden. Proposals being considered are having a civilian head the agency, setting up a process where a determination is made balancing the potential value of the information with any political implications. Decisionmakers at the NSA are trained to be apolitical in collecting intelligence making it difficult for them to make such determinations. The recording of conversations on Merkel's mobile phone was made at the request of the State Department. Mr Ledgett, a senior NSA official says there are 36,000 pages of "requirements" or intelligence requests from all parts of the U.S. government, including State, Defense, and Commerce. What to do with such requests and how to assess them will now be important questions for NSA. One of the risks of the NSA revelations is that individual countries will impose restrictions on the internet to protect information leading to a fragmentation of the Worldwide Web. U.S. relations with Iran have remained stuck in the original atmosphere of the period under U.S. president Carter in the late seventies with the Islamic revolution with the most recent president Ahmadinejad being one of the activists from that period, the isolation and sanctions have also created a siege mentality in the Islamic republic. The U.S. and the world has changed since that period after over three decades. The Obama administration sees an opportunity to gradually resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis by relaxing tensions and giving small wins to moderates in Iran like Mr Rouhani. Rouhani may see a way out for Iran's isolation and falling behind other countries in the region in developing its oil resources and economy. The moves also helps to reduce new sectarian tensions in the Middle East as the different countries take sides in the Syria....

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The WSJ discloses that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition 160 page report in 2012 described Google's anti-compettitive practices and recommended a anit-trust lawsuit for three anti-competitive practices. The WSJ obtained documents based on the Freedom of Information Act. Mullins and Winkler provide a detailed account of the practices cited in the report as anti-competitive. The FTC Commissioners did not act on the report and instead voted unanimously in 2013 to end the investigation after Google agreed to some voluntary changes. The report stated a different conclusion: Google's "conduct has resulted-and will result- in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets." Mullins and Winkler point out that this report shows Google's statement that no wrongdoing was found is incorrect.

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A big factor in U.S. car sales, which reached 7.5 million in 2015, exceeding the 7.3 million in 2000, is that a large portion of cars on the road were about 11 years old following the recession in 2008-2009. As Dexter Ford pointed out in a article in 2012 many car owners on the road had replaced the earlier 100,000 mile mark before buying a new car, with 200,000. This pent up demand, and the better technological features including gasoline conserving technology, gave new impetus to demand in 2013-2015. Lower gasoline prices at the pump of about $2.00 a gallon in Jan. 2016 across parts of the country made it economical to own SUV's and pickup trucks. The U.S. car companies Ford, GM and Chrysler-Fiat had sales of 2 million full size pickup in 2015, with the Ford F-150 leading. Car companies have come through a severe crisis and are taking steps to avoid a repeat of the mistakes of the past on fuel efficiency- Ford has introduced a lighter aluminium based version of the F-150 for example. Gasoline prices also provide buyers with extra money to meet car payments which now have been stretched to longer periods and lower rates by auto companies to reduce the cost burden per month. AAA says the average price in 2013 for a gallon of gas was $3.49, in 2014 at $3.34, in 2015 at $2.40. AAA says that 71% of gasoline stations sell gas at less than $2.00 in January 2016, and gas prices are likely to remain low for an extended period with lower demand from China, higher fuel efficiency going forward with stricter standards, new technology for shale oil production, and the replacement of cartel pricing by competing production from Saudis, Iran and Russia. On average Americans saved $115 billion on gasoline, or $550 per licensed driver, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report of January 6, 2016. In addition to the $550 saved the higher fuel efficiency with new technology adds a corresponding amount to savings per driver. Add to this the lower payment at low rates over longer periods and the car payment per month has been reduced significantly in a improving job market, to support car sales....

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U.S. auto sales including cars and light trucks reached 17.5 million in 2015, a 5.7% increase over 2014. Larger vehicles including pickup tucks and SUV's account for about half of all auto sales in 2015, with gas prices below $2.00 a gallon in Jan 2016 in most parts of the U.S. The average transaction price was up to $34,428, according to Kelley Blue Book. Auto incentives were up to $3063 per vehicle compared to $2809 ten years earlier, according to Kelley Blue Book. Analysts say automakers will reduce margins to subsidize zero interest loans in 2016 to increase sales. Lower sales are forecast after 2017 as the market will have caught up with much of the pent up demand by then. A plus for the automakers is the lower cost of steel and other material costs, and the better cost structures after bankruptcy, and renegotiated lower union pay scales. Additional plus is new management at U.S. automakers and at Toyota, and the technological advances this management is pushing, including fuel efficiency. Ride sharing, and other services developed by Google, are seen as disrupting the traditional car model to a limited extent. Countering this new development are millenials who are accounting for a quarter of Toyota sales in the last quarter of 2015, according to a Toyota executive....

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This WSJ editorial in September 2014 says many of president Obama's statements and decisions on Obama healthcare legislation and implementation, Syria, NSA and privacy, the Middle East, Russia, showed poor judgement. It refers to a piece by Peter Baker in NYT where it is said that Obama mocked how people see him as too professorial, diffident, in a sarcastic statement. The problem says WSJ is that president Obama has poor judgement. Being academically credentialed and quick grasp of subject matter is not the same as having the ability to discern things, instinct and grasp of the essence of the matter. George Bush senior had a long resume and was academically credentialed. By comparison Truman had a short resume and was not academically credentialed or quick with data and analysis. He had something more essential and important- a discerning mind and grasp of the larger picture, as well as listening abilities for exceptional advisors such as General Marshall and Acheson he gathered around him....