Foot-in-Mouth

By Pamarty Venkataramana

India has been witnessing a most unique scenario that must be haunting founding Fathers of the Constitution!

On the one hand is a ‘very strong’ Government in power which enjoys an absolute majority’ but where none barring the Honourable Prime Minister appears to speak anything on public policy or voice anything worthwhile on national matters of ‘good governance’.

On the other hand is a decimated rudderless, leaderless ‘opposition’ whose propped-up figurehead makes as much hue and cry as that of the puppet owned by the ventriloquist! So much so that his utterances border on gibberish and at best appear to be concerted ‘rowdyism’ orchestrated by a masked coterie plainly jealous of the tremendous turnaround being brought by his bête noire!

This is a plain statement of facts. No malice towards anybody at all.

Nothing was more louder about this ‘conflict of interest’ between ‘national interest’ and ‘vested interests’ than the ‘tweet protest’ by a perennially aspiring opposition lad-leader who has screamed of the ‘Arogya sethu’ app being a surveillance tool of Mr. Modi & cabinet.

‘’Arogya Sethu’is nothing but a toolbox aimed to prevent the spread of Covid-19 virus by creating an all India framework which literally is at fingertips of each and every citizen holding a phone!

Since the beginning of the current exceptional situation, governments worldwide, have been making efforts to empower citizens to take effective and targeted measures to shape the fight against COVID-19. Mobile applications with their various functions can contribute a significant added value in this regard.

It is necessary to let all Indians know that the debated mobile application would serve three main functions:
(1) informing and advising citizens and facilitating the organisation of the medical follow-up of persons with symptoms, regularly involving self-diagnosis questionnaires;
(2) interrupting infection chains and preventing a resurgence of infections in the reopening phase by warning people who have been in (close) contact with an infected person; and
(3) monitoring and enforcing the quarantine of infected persons, regularly involving self-assessment of their health condition during quarantine.

Also pertinent to note is that the developers of such apps are both public authorities and private sector companies. Not a video game console or private venture of politician heading the administration. So, criticism stands exposed as biased, motivated and juvenile delinquency. Although because the mobile app could e.g. track the geolocation of individuals, assess the degree of health risk of an individual or allow centralisation of specific categories of data, the question of users’ privacy cannot be avoided.

The whimper of protest however helps address importance of balancing the public interest purpose of fighting the pandemic and the privacy of individuals.

Key features help reinforce faith in utilisation of technology to curb spread of this deadly virus in the country.

Voluntary use of the apps: The larger the proportion of the population using the apps, the higher their effectiveness. Nonetheless, both the Government and this essayist strongly support the voluntary use of such apps by citizens.

Performance of a public task as the legal basis for processing: While the Government refers primarily to consent as the legal basis for the processing of data within the applications, one stresses upon the need to perform tasks in the public interest as the most appropriate. Also, one considers that voluntary use of the app does not automatically indicate consent as the legal basis for processing and supports legislative initiatives promoting the voluntary use of such apps and calls for relevant accompanying communication and awareness-raising activities.

No location tracing of individual users: The Government states very clearly that the aim of contact tracing apps is not to locate individuals or to enforce measures introduced by State governments, but to detect events, especially contacts with individuals with positive test results.

The collection of localisation data from individuals in the context of contact tracing apps would, in a considered view, violate the principle of data minimisation and pose major risks to privacy and security.

Decentralised storage of data: Both centralised and decentralised storage of data could potentially work but this commentator prefers the latter as being more privacy friendly.

Limitation of storage period: The Government of India follows the Universal approach regarding the limitation of the storage period in the sense that the contemplated emergency application should not remain in use after the COVID-19 crisis has passed and the collected data should be deleted or anonymised.

As a strong votary of the Constitution, one would emphasis that the ‘accountability principle’ should be observed, including privacy by design and privacy by default.

A data protection impact assessment should be carried out and the source code should be made publicly available to allow the widest possible review by the scientific community. The Government also emphasises the paramount significance of quality and accuracy of the data collected by the app to avoid false positives and false negatives. Ensuring appropriate security of data may by no means be overlooked either.

For those not oriented with world polemics, it may be useful to know that other countries have developed and injected similar apps into their society.

Some of them are based on geolocation are Coronamadrid and StopCovid19 in Spain,while others are based on the Bluetooth technology as a “digital handshake”, such as Stopp-Corona-App in Austria, StopCovid in France, ProteGo in Poland or an app developed by NHSX in the United Kingdom.

Privacy considerations must certainly be taken into account by those crying hoarse over a subject they know nothing of or care least by remaining closeted in their luxuriously decorated bedrooms, during this gloomy lockdown.

Jeetega India 🇮🇳 Fir muskurayega India 🇮🇳
Jai Hind 🙏