"Compliant", provided that the guarantees of protection of freedoms are strengthened, and that its usefulness is regularly assessed: the Cnil gave a highly anticipated opinion on Sunday on the StopCovid tracking application.
This government system should make it possible, during deconfinement, to identify contacts with patients with coronavirus. The application, inspired by strategies deployed by Singapore in particular, should alert people who have downloaded it when they have encountered, for example in a train or subway, people diagnosed positive for Covid-19, and themselves equipped.
A system in line with the current exceptional situation
Several other European countries are studying this type of device, which is based on “Bluetooth” technology allowing smartphones to communicate with each other. It will be based in France on volunteering, anonymous, temporary and transparent, promised the executive. The objective is to encourage informed people to be tested and to isolate themselves. StopCovid would also make it possible to map the evolution of the epidemic, which has killed 22,614 people in France since the beginning of March, according to the latest assessment communicated on Saturday.
The Cnil, an organization ensuring respect for freedoms in the digital domain, believes that in an "exceptional context of crisis management", in addition to the deconfinement from May 11, the system complies with European requirements "if certain conditions are met "
Beware of temptations
This means that “StopCovid” respects the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which regulates in Europe the collection, storage and sharing of personal data.
"This deployment must be part of an overall plan" of deconfinement and fight against the epidemic, according to the Cnil, which warns "against the temptation of" technological solutionism "". It "requests certain additional guarantees" and wants "to be able to vote again after the debate in Parliament", according to an opinion made public on Sunday, and adopted on April 24.
No negative consequence in case of refusal of use
Among the guarantees going in the right direction, according to the CNIL: volunteering, and the use of pseudonyms. The organization requests that the download be made without "negative consequences in case of non-use". No question of refusing a test or a train ticket to a person who refuses to use the application, in plain language.
The Cnil also lists a series of technical suggestions. It emphasizes in particular that the algorithm envisaged at this stage by the government "should no longer be used", if we stick to the recommendations of the National Information Systems Security Agency.
Will distrust in government play a role?
The Cnil notes that the effectiveness of StopCovid will depend "on its availability in application stores (appstore, playstore, etc.), and widespread adoption by the public". And this at a time when only 39% of French people have confidence in the government to deal effectively with the coronavirus, according to an Ifop poll for the Sunday Journal.
The National Council of the Order of Physicians had also estimated, in a notice given on Saturday, that "the effectiveness of an application for monitoring social interactions depends on significant use", and asked that it be accompanied by "massive" screening.
No minimum use to be effective
In an interview with the Journal du dimanche, Secretary of State for Digital Cedric O pointed out that the application does not currently work correctly on the iPhone, or one in 5 smartphones in France.
But according to him, "what the epidemiologists say is that there is no minimum threshold of downloads necessary for this application to be useful". He affirmed that “in the arbitration between health constraints and individual freedoms, we pushed thoroughly towards individual freedoms. "
Sunday, he commented by a tweet on the opinion of the CNIL, which he said "validates the deployment of #StopCovid as a building block of a global strategy for health surveys. An important step. We continue. "To avoid any drift, the CNIL" recommends (...) that the impact of the system on the health situation be studied and documented on a regular basis ".
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