Paris (AFP)

Using data from our phones to fight the coronavirus, while avoiding attacks on individual freedoms: the French government is working on this thorny subject with a mobile application project to "identify the chains of transmission", on "the basis of volunteering. "

First hostile to the idea of ​​digital tracing and facing elected officials on the lookout for this issue, the executive is now preparing the minds for a possible use of this technique as part of the strategy of deconfinement of the population, in order to avoid a new outbreak of the epidemic which has already killed more than 10,000 people in France.

In an interview with Le Monde on Wednesday, Minister of Health Olivier Véran and Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O explain that the government is working on a project called "StopCovid". It aims to "develop an application that could limit the spread of the virus by identifying chains of transmission" while being respectful of privacy and individual freedoms, details Cédric O.

"No decision is made" but "the idea would be to warn people who have been in contact with a patient who tested positive so that they can be tested themselves, and if need be taken care of very early, or to confine oneself, "he explains.

The application is based on Bluetooth technology, which allows our smartphones to identify nearby devices (headphones, speakers, printers ...), and not the collection of geolocation data.

In France, nearly 8 out of 10 French people have a smartphone equipped with a Bluetooth sensor, notes former Secretary of State for Digital Mounir Mahjoubi in a note given to deputies.

The application would only be used on a voluntary basis and could be "uninstalled at any time", says Cédric O.

"It will retrace the history of social relations that took place in the previous days, without allowing any outside consultation, or transmitting any data," he said. "When two people meet for a certain period, and at a close distance, the mobile phone of one records the references of the other in its history. If a positive case is declared, those who will have been in contact with this no one is notified automatically. "

- Critical mass of users -

The data will be "anonymized" and their use compatible with European law on personal data, according to Olivier Véran. "No one will have access to the list of contaminated people, and it will be impossible to know who contaminated whom. The computer code will be public" and the National Commission for Data Protection (Cnil), gendarme of the protection of data in France, is "closely" associated with the work, he says.

The work has been carried out by the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria) for several days. They are part of a European project (PEPP-PT) carried out in cooperation with the German Fraunhofer Institute Heinrich Hertz and the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne in Switzerland. This project is based on the same open source application prerequisites, installed voluntarily, protecting privacy and respecting European legislation on data protection.

However, is such an application based on people's goodwill effective? This remains to be demonstrated. The system only works between people who have downloaded the application, so a sufficient critical mass must use it for it to have an effect.

According to a study by the British University of Oxford published in the journal "Science", such an application can help stop the spread of the virus if it is used by 60% of the population.

Singapore uses this system, which it called Trace Together: an application launched on March 20 had been downloaded there a million times on April 1, according to a government score, for a total population in the city-state of 5 , 7 million people.

But the rise in cases in recent weeks has since prompted Singapore to add to the Trace Together scheme, the closure of its schools and workplaces, and to place nearly 20,000 migrant workers in quarantine.

© 2020 AFP