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India unlike any other democracy is forcing people to use its covid app.
The planet has never seen anything like Aarogya Setu. Two months ago, the Indian Coronavirus Communication Tracking App did not exist; it now has almost 100 million users. Prime Minister Narendra Modi boosted the release by encouraging each of the country's 1.3 billion people to download it, with the result that it became the fastest app ever to cross 50 million downloads within two weeks of its launch.
"We beat Pokémon Go," says a smiling Arnab Kumar, who is leading the creation of an Indian government service.
India is actually the only democratic nation in the world that makes its coronavirus monitoring software mandatory for millions of people, according to MIT Technology Review's Covid Tracing Database, a global contact tracking device database.
While the official stance is that using the software is optional, the fact is that government employees are expected to use it, although it is also mandated by major private employers and landlords. The City of Noida is allegedly fining and even threatening to arrest anyone who refuses to install the software on their devices.
It's a dramatic step that generates ferocious criticism from civil liberties experts nationally and around the globe.
Rahul Gandhi, a prominent member of the Indian Parliament and former leader of the opposition Indian National Congress, is among those who criticized the app for "no operational oversight" and for raising "significant data protection and privacy issues."
"Technology will help keep us safe," Gandhi tweeted recently. "But fear must not be used to monitor people without their permission."
"There is a human rights infringement that is not justified here," says Estelle Massé, Senior Policy Analyst at Access Now, a digital rights group. "There is a possibility of beginning a method that can be repeated for post-pandemic surveillance."
When Aarogya Setu was first announced, the Indian Government requested approval, and the proposal initially sounded voluntary. At least 1 million people have been ordered to use it today, including central government staff and employees of private companies such as Zomato and Swiggy Food Delivery Services. It's a well-practiced technique in India, where "voluntary mandatory" technology has a history of being used as a gatekeeper for some essential freedoms.
Though India is the first democracy to make its touch monitoring app compulsory for millions of people, other democracies have entered into agreements with cell phone companies to access local data from residents. In Europe, the data has mostly been aggregated and anonymised. In Israel, the pandemic-focused law enforcement has used a telephone surveillance tool usually reserved for counter-terrorism purposes. The policies of the Israeli government have been the focus of a legal dispute that has led to the Supreme Court and the legislature of the country.
Non-transparent
Many of these problems can be traced back to lack of accountability. Neither the privacy policy nor the terms of service of the app were publicly accessible at the time of release, and in spite of requests, the developers did not publish them. Because the software is not open source, the code and procedures can not easily be checked by third parties, and there is no public sunset clause specifying when the software will cease to be compulsory, while Kumar believes that the data will be removed on a rolling basis after a period of 60 days for patients and 30 days for healthy people.
And there is no definite road map as to how far India's national and state governments will go: one recent study said the government wants Aarogya Setu pre-installed on all new smartphones; another said the app could soon be needed to fly.
In the early days of app growth, Kumar said it would exploit the technologies being developed jointly by Apple and Google for iPhone and Android. The program will be released in just a few days, but now comes with guidelines that include requesting user consent and preventing location tracking — none of which Aarogya Setu complies with. Kumar says that Google engineers have been in close touch with Aarogya Setu 's developers, and his team will determine whether they can still incorporate a decentralized Silicon Valley system designed to protect privacy. Google and Apple have quickly tracked the app to both the Android and iOS app stores.
Nevertheless, there are still significant concerns that blurring the distinction between optional and compulsory, and between privacy-preserving and privacy-invading, would have long-term implications.
"There is no attempt on the part of the state to win citizens ' trust," says Anivar Aravind, Executive Director of the Indic Project Civic Technology Organization. "Here is a group of private-sector corporate volunteers, with no accountability, who created an app for governments that is forced on everyone's personal devices."
