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Comment by jonathanstrange | Hacker News Reader

For anyone who doesn't read German, here is a summary: The company in charge of the connectors for the health care system "Telematik" built devices with certificates that expire after 5 years. Instead of updating thousands of machines with new certificates, the company claims these need to be replaced for a total cost of 400M Euro. The CCC showed how the firmware can be changed to accept new certificates, making the hardware replacement unnecessary, and offers to assist hospitals and doctor's offices with the software patch. However, the company "gematik" who delivers these connection endpoints first has to sign the new certificates, which they so far haven't agreed to.

What's worse about this story is that the company apparently planned the hardware replacement in a way that it would have to be replaced again in 2027, and they still were awarded the contracts for this multi-million dollar project.

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I wonder how many golf trips with steak dinners and female "companions" the bureaucrats awarding the contracts got treated to...

The German government has been lauded as this great bastion, "Look, their economy is still running!", but it's also has its corrupt elements. Besides, the whole roaring economy thing is related to making the rest of Europe peg its currency to the German one by way of the Euro, making the rest of the continent suffer...

We've already been fined by the EU for refusing to work against corruption. It's a big thing here and voters only care for a few months after the news reports, if that much.

How can I vote to replace corruption?

Don’t vote for the most egregious offenders. I’d say on a party base that’s CDU and AfD, followed by SPD (with our CumEx-"I can’t remember"-chancellor Scholz). Short term, nothing would happen. But if people en large refused to allow corruption, party politics would change.

This makes it sound like Germany had chosen to introduce the Euro whereas [1]:

>President François Mitterrand argued for the single currency because he hoped to bolster French influence in an EU that would otherwise fall under the sway of a unified Germany

However, you can argue that the continent suffers because Germany had reduced its labor costs [2], which unnecessarily moved production processes.

[1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2012/11/17/the-time-bomb-a...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartz_concept

Why downvote this valid comment?

I‘m assuming the German government wouldn’t be able to compel them to turn over their private key, but they could certainly make it very clear that they would jeopardise any future contracts if they refused to cooperate.

I'm assuming you haven't heard about corr^w lobby.

What's corr^w?

Ctrl-W in certain contexts (especially shells) deletes the previous word. Shells vary in their behavior, but in this situation partOfAWor^w is essentially the same as using strike through. It implies the writer started writing a word and changed their mind on which word to use.

In this case, they're implying lobbying and corruption are one and the same, as far as I can tell.

there is somebody in the chain of command who benefits of that deal and will do what she can to keep it as inefficient as it is.

It is a little more problematic than that:

The Gematik GmbH is in part managed (owned?) by the German ministry of health [0] and some health organizations like the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Agencies.

That says something about the 'risks' the Gematik takes (Hint: none).

Similar story: Earlier this year some health card readers, certified by the Gematik had a bug. They wouldn't read certain cards that supposedly were electrostatically charged. The solution was a grounding device connected to the USB port of the card reader. [1] This thingy cost the doctor's practices another 100 bucks even though this clearly is a design flaw by the manufacturer.

They can do pretty much what they want at this point and the physicians and hospitals just have to cough up the dough.

[0] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematik

[1] https://www.borncity.com/blog/2022/01/16/problem-mit-statisc...

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