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The António Costa executive this week proposed a bill submitted to parliament to make the use of the ‘StayAway Covid’ contact tracking application mandatory in work, school and academic contexts, as well as in the Armed Forces, security forces and public administration. a controversial proposal whose constitutionality was questioned.
The Government’s draft bill provides for fines of up to 500 euros for non-compliance, either for the use of the application in those contexts or for the use of a mask, which the Government also wants to make mandatory in “access or stay in public spaces and vials ”.
The intention of António Costa, who this week declared that he wanted to “shake up” Portuguese society, contradicts the guidelines of the WHO, which in May of this year published several ethical considerations on the subject, explicitly saying that “the decision of downloading and using an application that contributes to public health surveillance or digital proximity tracking must be voluntary and informed ”.
“Governments should not make the use of an application mandatory” and “a person should be free to turn off the application whenever they want and should be free to delete it whenever they want,” defends the United Nations health agency.
In the guidelines on the use of screening applications issued in April this year, the European Commission argued that “the installation of an application on mobile devices should be voluntary and should not have negative consequences for the person who decides not to download or use the application “.
Despite not being binding guidelines, these principles returned in May to guide the Commission’s new guidelines on the compatibility of these applications between the different member states, in order to guarantee their functionality when citizens move: “they must be voluntary , transparent, temporary, cybersecurity, use temporary and anonymous data, use ‘Bluetooth’ technology and be approved by national health authorities ”.
No European country has mandatory applications. Slovenia was the only European country that considered making the ‘OstaniZdrav’ screening request mandatory, which began to apply in August this year, just before the ‘StayAway Covid’ was launched, and was adapted to be used in Germany.
Before presenting it, the government of Janez Jansa defended its mandatory use for infected or quarantined people, which was contested by the opposition in the Slovenian parliament, which accused the executive of slowly introducing a dictatorship in the country.
China, where the new coronavirus emerged, was also the first country to adopt contact-tracking apps, one of which gave citizens a risk code for contagion from exposure to the virus, without which no one could enter or exit. certain regions. from the field.
In Turkey, by Recep Tayip Erdogan, anyone infected with the new coronavirus must download the ‘Hayat Eve Sigar’ app and the Turkish Ministry of Health shares their location data with the police. Whoever violates the quarantine is warned first, but can then be fined or arrested.
Singapore imposes the use of its detection app, ‘Tracetogether’, on migrant workers it considers high risk, such as those in the construction sector who share community dormitories or those who work in ports.
In Qatar, the ‘Ehteraz’ app is mandatory for anyone who wants to walk down the street and who refuses to install it can be fined or subject to three years in prison.
In India, one of the countries with the most infections, since May it is mandatory for all workers in the public and private sector or for people in confined spaces to install the application ‘Aarogya Setu’, under penalty of fines or prison sentences that can go up to two years.
The National Data Protection Commission warned this Wednesday that the mandatory use of ‘StayAway Covid’ “raises serious doubts about the privacy of citizens” and the D3 Association has already said that it admitted to proceed with a precautionary measure to stop the obligation to install the application, saying that “mandatory applications do not belong to a democratic Europe”.
Left Block, PCP, CDS-PP, PAN, Verdes and Chega have already spoken out against the mandatory use of the application, while PSD leader Rui Rio has expressed doubts about the effectiveness of said measure, referring their analysis to consideration. in parliamentary committee.
The President of the Republic said that if constitutional doubts persist about the law that requires the use of ‘StayAway Covid’, he will send it for preventive inspection by the Constitutional Court.
The mobile application, launched on September 1, allows to track, quickly and anonymously and through physical proximity between ‘smartphones’, the networks of contagion by covid-19, informing users that they were, in the last 14 days, in the same. someone infected with the new SARS-Cov2 coronavirus.
