The government was forced to delay the debate and the vote of the National Assembly on StopCovid, its controversial project of contact tracing against the background of a coronavirus pandemic, but the project continues cahin-caha its race against the clock for be able to support deconfinement.
Unable to present exactly the contours of the smartphone application, the government had to give up organizing the vote it had promised, and postpone it until later.
Questions of public liberties “seem to me to be well founded. They must be asked. They must be debated, ”underlined Edouard Philippe before the National Assembly, about this application which arouses criticism even within the majority. However, the Prime Minister has not yet let go of the project, as rumors ran in the Assembly and in the press. "When the application under development will work and before its implementation, we will organize a specific debate, followed by a specific vote," he said.
"An electronic bracelet passed" voluntarily "on the wrist of the French"
The objective of a mobile tracking application is to allow each user who learns about his contamination to warn all the other users he has encountered in the previous two weeks, so that they can take their precautions (self-containment , tests ...).
"Difficult to warn whoever shared your metro train at 7.46am on line 12," said the Prime Minister to the Assembly to present the interest of the application. "You don't know him, he doesn't know you, and the RATP doesn't know you either." On the other hand, our smartphones can keep the memory of all the other smartphones they have encountered, thanks to the Bluetooth technology used to communicate electronic devices at a short distance.
But this simple idea runs up against formidable problems of protection of the private life when it is a question of implementing it concretely, and therefore of keeping track of all our meetings. Rights organizations question the ability of everyone to give "free and informed" consent to the implications of such tracing.
"StopCovid looks like a real electronic bracelet" voluntarily "on the wrist of the French," for example estimated in a joint press release the National Union of Journalists (SNJ), the National Union of Journalists CGT (SNJ-CGT), the Human Rights League (LDH) and the Union Syndicale Solidaires.
Reach an “interoperable” solution between the different countries
After the Prime Minister's statement to the National Assembly, Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O assured that the public and private partners gathered to design the application remained mobilized "to be ready on May 11". “It is a technical challenge, and it is a challenge that we share with our European partners. Our priority is to take all the guarantees, especially in terms of security, ”he told AFP.
The French secretary of state said that he regularly took stock with several European ministers concerned, including his Italian and Spanish colleagues. “We talk to each other all the time. There is a fairly strong consensus "on the fact in particular that it is necessary to reach an" interoperable "solution between the different countries, explained Cédric O. European states also want to be able to" make their own technical choices ", whatever is done by Google and Apple, he said.
The two American giants, which control the two major global application stores (App store and Google Play Store), want to quickly offer a common base for a contact tracking application, which states that wish could then customize. Paul Hermelin, president of the French computer giant Capgemini suggested Tuesday that StopCovid could possibly do without Apple, which represents around 15% of smartphones in circulation in France.
- Edouard Philippe
- Apple
- Application
- Surveillance
- Coronavirus
- Society