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The Aarogya Setu app, India’s leading contact tracking technology, launched on April 2 of this year. The application was developed by the National Computing Center of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
According to NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, it has become the world’s fastest app to reach 50 million downloads in just 13 days.
Aarogya Setu is designed to track other application users that a person came into contact with. It then alerts app users if any of the contacts test positive on COVID-19.
Also read: The Ministry of Health launches the Aarogya Setu IVRS facility for those without smartphones
The application uses the Bluetooth and GPS capabilities of the phone. It will keep a record of all other Aarogya Setu users that it detected nearby using Bluetooth. It will also use a GPS log of all the places where the device had been at 15 minute intervals.
These records are stored on the phone until such time as any user tests positive or declares symptoms of COVID-19 in a self-assessment survey in the app. In such cases, the logs are uploaded to the servers.
The application is available in 11 languages. All central government officials, including subcontracted labor, have been instructed to download it. On April 14, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation called on people to download the app.
But experts and even ethical hackers have voiced concerns about the app’s privacy. Critics say Arogya Setu, and apps like Sahyog linking it, could infringe on privacy as there was no clarity on how data would be shared between the two apps.
There is no legislation that explains in detail how Indians’ online privacy should be protected. Therefore, users of Aarogya Setu have little choice but to accept the privacy policy provided by the government.
The policy goes into detail about where and how long the data will be retained. But it leaves the language vague about who will have access to it.
According to the policy, “individuals who perform necessary medical and administrative interventions related to COVID-19” will have access to the data.
Advocacy groups argue that there should be more transparency in the inner workings of an application that is being promoted by the government and that requests the personal data of millions of citizens.
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