StopCovid, a controversial Covid-19 tracking application

Code name: StopCovid. Mission? Support deconfinement in France by allowing its users to be warned if they have encountered a person contaminated by Covid-19. While the National Digital Council must submit its report on this application on Friday 24 April and the National Assembly must debate it on Tuesday, doubts are growing about its usefulness and effectiveness.

• What will the application look like?

The StopCovid application envisaged by the executive, if deployed, must allow the user to be warned if he has encountered a person infected with the virus. It would operate on a voluntary basis.

Franco-German researchers responsible for developing the future application published on April 18 their technical proposals for a system managed by a centralized health authority.

Developed by teams from the National Research Institute for Digital Science and Technology (Inria) ,  in collaboration with researchers from the German Fraunhofer Institute, this protocol, called "Robert", is based on sharing, by people detected positive for Covid-19, from a list of anonymous identifiers corresponding to the people they encountered during the incubation period of the virus and detected using Bluetooth wireless technology - it does not use geolocation data smartphones.

📄 Grandstand | Better understand the challenges of #ContactTracing, the #ROBERTprotocol research protocol and the institute's commitment to the fight against # Covid19: the forum of @BSportisse, CEO of @ Inria ➡️ https://t.co/ 2QGmCCmRgV # StopCovid pic.twitter.com/FzSCPCy974

The protocol is designed so that "no one, not even the State, has access to the list of people diagnosed with positive or to the list of social interactions between people", explains Inria CEO, Bruno Sportisse, in a press release.

In this system, a user of the application diagnosed positive will be asked to "give his consent so that his history of crypto-identifiers encountered is sent to a server of a health authority without disclosing his own crypto-identifiers".

All users of the application will periodically check with this server if their own identifiers are among those deemed to be "at risk".

The CNIL will be consulted on the final form to verify that it is in accordance with French law as well as the European standards of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

• Why the idea of using a tracing app does -she  afraid?

This project of tracing mobile data to stem the coronavirus is criticized up to the ranks of the majority for its risks concerning the privacy of its users, even if it is presented as not derogating from the regulations on personal data.

Since the start of the coronavirus epidemic, several countries have taken the plunge, like Russia, Israel and even South Korea. These countries have bet on digital tracing, in some cases using geolocation data, to the chagrin of their detractors who have denounced an attack on freedoms.

>> Read also: Coronavirus and digital tracing in France: "Safeguards are needed"

As a sign of the sensitivity of the subject, a European Commission document ,  seen by Reuters and dealing with a pan-European approach ,  provides for the destruction of personal data as soon as the coronavirus epidemic is under control.

Three hundred renowned international scientists, specialists in the field, have signed a forum where they declare "concerned that the monitoring solutions envisaged could lead to unprecedented surveillance of society as a whole". Their text emphasizes the need for decentralized data storage.

• What are the limits of use?

Heard by the Senate, the president of the Cnil, Marie-Laure Denis ,  underlined the limits of the use of a digital platform by recalling the conditions for it to be effective.

Drawing on a study from the University of Oxford, she notably stressed that the application should be downloaded massively for it to produce effects.

"It would be dangerous to think that an application of this type could solve everything", she declared, recalling that the creation of this application could only be one of the elements of a more global response including continuity of barrier gestures and ability to test the population.

Finally, the president of the CNIL reminds that all the French population was not equipped with a smartphone

"There are already 25% of people who do not have a 'smartphone', as we say in French, allowing the app to be downloaded. And this rate is even higher among the elderly. They are not that 44% of those over 70 who have a smartphone, compared to 98% of 18-25 year olds, "she said. In other words: more than half of the population at risk is immediately out of the game. Not to mention the white areas on the territory that could distort the device.

Finally, the Secretary of State for Digital, Cedric O, expressed doubts about the ability of the application to be ready for May 11, the date on which is scheduled progressive deconfinement.

• How will the parliamentary vote take place?

Under pressure from the opposition, the government finally decided on Tuesday that the debates in the National Assembly on "tracking" and progressive deconfinement would be followed by votes, in a hemicycle supposed to be replenished.

"Absolutely serene", Gilles Le Gendre, the boss of the majority, felt before the press "totally unimaginable" a negative vote.

But according to a member of the majority group interviewed by AFP, "the vote will be very, very complicated" within the "walkers" some elected officials are hostile to tracing.

For Damien Abad (LR), there is indeed "a risk of fracturing" of the majority. Elected officials wishing to vote against will be able to notify themselves in advance. And if the ballot is not binding, it will have "a strong political value", he predicted: in the event of a majority vote against, "I do not see how [the government] could get around it".

Socialist and Communist groups have indicated their intention to vote against in this vote.

This vote in the National Assembly will be followed by another in the Senate, the date of which has not yet been fixed.

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