While the green light has been given to StopCovid, the government’s digital tracing application continues to divide. Some elected officials, like Valérie Pécresse and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, accuse him of being “full of faults” and “ineffective”. What sometimes give rise to “fake news”.
The launch of StopCovid will take place at the beginning of June. Authorized by Parliament on Wednesday May 27 in the evening, the government’s digital tracking application is still arousing criticism. Indeed, although it has been validated by the Cnil (National Commission for Computing and Liberties) Tuesday, May 26, the interface is divided on the issues of the violation of individual freedom and the risks to personal data.
Some elected officials openly opposed it, like Valérie Pécresse (Let’s be free). On European 1Thursday, May 28, the president of the Île-de-France region notably considered that the application presented “full of flaws”. “For example, if you pass someone in a key-touch car, at a red light, she can say that you have contaminated the person while they are in the car”, she said. As a reminder, StopCovid is based on the principle that users of the application report themselves if they test positive for the new coronavirus.
The low probability of being identified as a contact when stopped at a red light
Then, users who have been within a meter of them for more than 15 minutes – in a supermarket or on the street, for example – in the last two weeks are notified that they have been in contact with an infected individual in order to act accordingly. Thus, it seems unlikely that two motorists would be stopped at a red light, so close, for so long. “The waiting time imposed on a user must never exceed 120 seconds in normal operation”even rules article 110-C.3 of the decree of June 21, 1991, noted by franceinfo.
Nevertheless, it is true that the State Department for Digital Affairs indicates that “if you pass someone three times five minutes, you can also be spotted”, as reported by our colleagues. Moreover, the probability of meeting the same person three times during the day, systematically for five minutes or more, at a red light, remains very low.
“App does not access GPS or phonebook”
Another worried politician: Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “Everything that is possible is not desirablehad thus hammered the leader of La France insoumise during the debates in the National Assembly. I will not take the Covid-19 app, and I have this privilege of being on the podium to tell everyone who has me in their phone book, their agenda, their contacts, to remove my name immediately from their phone. if they ever take the application”. In question: the fear that StopCovid will recover the contacts contained in the smartphones of its users.
Again, this is false information. Indeed, the application works only from pseudonymised identifiers and via Bluetooth; she therefore does not need the phone book or contacts on social networks. “The answer is frank and definitive: the application does not access the GPS or the phone book. It only asks for two permissions when you install it: that of using the phone’s camera to scan QR codes, and that of accessing the location, which actually allows him to use Bluetooth”explains Baptiste Robert, a hacker and cybersecurity researcher interviewed by our colleagues from CheckNews.
Application “ineffective” or “useful and necessary complement”?
In addition to his concerns about the attack on individual freedom, Jean-Luc Mélenchon speaks of an “ineffective” project. Like many deputies, the elected official evokes the digital divide as an obstacle to the proper functioning of the application. “StopCovid is ineffective because 25% of French people do not have a smartphone. Unless you have decided to offer them! And the two thirds of the population who, first, could be affected by the disease, those who have more 70 years old, do not have a smartphone and do not intend to acquire one”launched the leader of La France insoumise.
However, the government wants to be reassuring through the voice of Cédric O, the Secretary of State for Digital, who recognizes that “StopCovid is not magic” corn “offers a useful and necessary complement” to health teams. “It must be a tool in the toolbox, in a more global strategy” of deconfinement, indicates AFP, quoting a “parliamentary source”of which TV5 World echoes. As a reminder, many health professionals favor large-scale tracing in order to isolate infected people and break the chain of contamination of the new coronavirus.
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