India follows China’s lead in expanding use of COVID-19 tracking app

With more than 70,000 people already infected, the number of cases in India is expected to exceed China, the source of the outbreak, within a week.

Like many apps that are being deployed around the world, Aarogya Setu uses Bluetooth signals on smartphones to record when people come into close contact with each other, so that contacts can quickly receive alerts when a person tests positive by COVID-19.

But the Indian app also uses GPS location data to augment the information gathered via Bluetooth and build a centralized database of the spread of infection, an approach that most countries avoid for privacy reasons.

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And it mimics China’s health QR code system with a feature that rates a person’s probable health status in green, orange, or red, meaning whether the person is safe, at high risk, or is a carrier of the virus.

In addition to that, the federal government earlier this month made use of the mandatory app for all public and private sector employees returning to work, as the world’s largest blockade facilitates sharp criticism from rights advocates. digital.

It made India the only democratic country in the world to make using a contact tracking app mandatory for its citizens, according to the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).

“The government practically forces you and takes your data without consent,” said B.N. Srikrishna, a former Supreme Court judge, who led an effort to draft India’s first data privacy law.

“Once your fundamental rights are violated from left to right, without anyone questioning you, and if the courts are not going to help you, you are even worse than China.”

But the Modi government, which has received international criticism for its treatment of the country’s large Muslim minority, is not backing down.

The Ministry of Railways, which currently operates special trains to bring migrant workers and others to their home cities, ordered all passengers to unload Aarogya Setu “before beginning their journey.”

A paramilitary force that watches over India’s airports and subway stations in the capital New Delhi has proposed a similar plan for all passengers, according to Indian media reports.

A CISF paramilitary spokesperson said it had not made such recommendations to the government, while the Delhi Metro said it had not yet finalized its plan to resume services.

And in Noida, a center for smartphone manufacturing on the outskirts of New Delhi, the police are using the country’s criminal code to make sure everyone on the road has downloaded the app.

PRIVACY, SURVEILLANCE CONCERNS

The National Computer Center (NIC), the government agency that developed Aarogya Setu, is free to share personal data from the app with government departments and public health institutions, according to a circular issued by the Indian Ministry of Technology on May 11. .

The system could be used to create permanent government databases containing confidential personal information about Indian citizens, said the New Delhi-based digital rights group, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF).

The IFF also raised a red flag on the NIC’s ability to share anonymous data with Indian universities and research institutions.

“This demonstrates the incentives for why the Indian government has taken a centralized approach,” said the IFF. “It is less about taking the least intrusive measure to respond to the public health crisis, but more about maximizing the usefulness of the data.”

India’s technology ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Critics, including a French hacker, have asked the government to make the application’s source code public, so that independent researchers can fully understand the technology.

The government intends to do that, two senior officials from India’s technology ministry told Reuters, but declined to give a timeline.

The technology ministry previously said the Aarogya Setu app can help authorities identify virus hotspots and better focus on health efforts, and that the information would be used “only to administer necessary medical interventions.”

An official from the government’s expert group, NITI Aayog, said last month that the application was a “temporary solution to a temporary problem,” adding that the country may have stumbled upon “the initial building block for a health pile. from India. “

AADHAR 2.0

Critics say the government’s approach to the app is reminiscent of the Modi administration’s effort to make Aadhar, a biometric identification system, mandatory for everything from opening a new bank account to obtaining a mobile phone connection.

That momentum, which also sparked fears of a surveillance state, was withheld by the High Court of India in 2018.

There are also questions about whether the core Bluetooth contact tracking features will work effectively without new technology from Apple and Google, which many countries are now embracing. The tech giants will not allow apps like Aarogya Setu, which use GPS and are mandatory, to use their tools.

So far, almost 100 million Indian smartphone users have downloaded the app since its launch in early April.

The government released a version of the app on Thursday for about 5 million users of the cheap JioPhone with Internet access. The launch will soon cover the approximately 95 million remaining JioPhone users.

But another 300 million Indians use phones with basic functions and do not have access to the Aarogya Setu application.

For them, India launched a toll-free number that connects their devices to the Aarogya Setu platform, allowing them to self-assess for COVID-19 through an interactive voice response system.

But mandatory use of the app could sideline these people if the rules mean they can’t get on a train to go to work.

“It is not just a privacy issue, but a human rights issue where an entire section of society is going to be excluded from access to transportation, from access to their workplace,” said Prasanth Sugathan of SFLC India.

“It will definitely be a big problem for them.”

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