StopCovid: chronicle of an announced failure

A low number of downloads and criticisms of the European Commission against an app accused, moreover, of collecting more personal data than necessary. Don't throw it away any more: two weeks after its launch, StopCovid, the official French contact tracing application to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, is far from unanimous.

>> Read also on France 24: StopCovid, a controversial Covid-19 tracking application

According to official government figures, only 1.7 million have installed it. After a more than correct start-up - 600,000 downloads the first day -, the pace of installations has slowed down: in the last five days, only 200,000 French people have fallen for StopCovid, specifies Francetvinfo…

This is very far from the recommendations of researchers who believe that it would take a much wider adoption (from around 20% of the population) for StopCovid to start to be effective. 

The problem of a “cocorico solution”

The European Commission is also skeptical. She criticized, on Wednesday, the lack of interoperability of the French app with those developed by 16 other European countries. “This is the problem of having a cocorico solution, while at the same time we are witnessing the reopening of borders in Europe. If the applications do not interact with each other, a Frenchman who goes abroad will not be able to know if he comes into contact with an infected individual ”, underlines Nadège Martin, specialist in intellectual property law and associate lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright, contacted by France 24. 

The defenders of the protection of private data also do not overflow with enthusiasm. Gaëtan Leurent, cryptography specialist who works for Inria (an institute which is also in charge of the StopCovid project), discovered that the application collected information on far more people than what had been announced at the start , reported Médiapart, Monday, June 15. In theory, the application only recovers data when two people who have installed StopCovid on their phone meet for at least 15 minutes within one meter of each other. In reality, it brings up the information “of all the people who meet via the app”, regardless of the time spent nearby, notes Médiapart. The government recognized this much more massive tracing than expected, hiding behind a questionable technical explanation.

I just realized that #StopCovid seems to send all contacts to the server, even passing on the other side of the street. This would contradict the official decree (contacts of 15min at 1m), and violate data minimization principle required by @CNIL and #GDPRhttps: //t.co/tV7yj0AuSZ

These multiple hiccups give the impression of "the chronicle of an announced failure," says Constantin Pavléas, director of the firm Pavléas lawyers and specialist in the law of new technologies, contacted by France 24. For him, it could hardly be otherwise made initial choices. "France has taken as a model the application developed by Singapore, while the latter has not proved effective in preventing the spread," he notes. The authorities of the Asian city-state indeed recognized, at the end of April, that their application had not helped to slow down the Covid-19, even though 20% of Singaporeans had downloaded it.

Political errors

Constantin Pavléas also stresses that the European Commission is right to criticize France. “We got the wrong scale, we had to do everything to build a digital solution at European level in order to counter a virus that knows no borders”, asserts Constantin Pavléas. It would even be the “original sin of the French approach”, believes Frans Imbert-Vier, CEO of Ubcom, a Swiss firm specializing in the protection of digital secrecy, contacted by France 24.

This choice to go it alone on the European scene illustrates, for him, the bottom of the problem of StopCovid which is political. “The government preferred to remain faithful to the principle of digital sovereignty by developing a national solution, rather than being pragmatic by adopting the same type of app as its European neighbors, in order to jointly face the health threat”, summarizes Frans Imbert-Viert. 

The other countries, like Germany, have in fact preferred to develop their solution around the standards for digital tracing decreed by Google and Apple, so that their applications can be easily used on the vast majority of smartphones. France, meanwhile, did not want to let these American wolves enter the fold of French digital health.

If the French did not rush to StopCovid, it would again be due to political errors. "The government has shown a lack of transparency regarding the use of data by the application which has undermined public confidence," says Frans Imbert-Vier. As evidenced by the duration of data retention. "The government continues to refuse to explain why the information collected is kept for three months, while the order of doctors and the World Health Organization ensure that this data is no longer of any use for health after 21 days", underlines this expert.

What to do with StopCovid?

The revelations of Médiapart go in the same direction. “Why didn't you spontaneously say that StopCovid was collecting more information than initially planned? This lack of transparency can appear worrying for an application which affects our fundamental freedoms since it allows us to know where you were, when and with whom ”, underlines Frans Imbert-Vier.

The hare raised by Médiapart calls into question even the effectiveness of StopCovid. “For a contact tracing application to be useful, the data collected must all be of high quality. But if StopCovid transmits information on each person crossed [regardless of the duration of the contact, note], the database loses its relevance to fight against the Covid-19 ”, explains lawyer Nadège Martin.

The first two weeks of existence have confirmed fears about the effectiveness of StopCovid in its current state, recognize the three experts interviewed. But they don't agree on what to do with the baby. For Frans Vier-Imber, “you have to start from scratch” because the flaws inherent in the French solution, notably the incompatibility with other European apps, make it irrecoverable. Constantin Pavléas also believes that we must turn the page on this application. But it goes further, and calls for the creation of a real “Europe of health, which would integrate the digital strategy, and would have a decision-making power to impose the type of application at EU level”.

Less pessimistic, Nadège Martin judges that it is still a bit early to bury StopCovid completely. “There was a timing problem. The application was launched at a time when the perceived danger from the coronavirus had diminished which may have contributed to the low number of downloads, ”she notes. This lawyer believes that if the fear of a second wave took shape, interest in the application could start again. It is only then that we can really take stock of the effectiveness of StopCovid. In the meantime, she judges that it would be better to improve what already exists rather than reinventing the wheel. Above all, “what to replace this application with? Nothing says that an alternative will be better accepted by the French ”, she believes.

But all judge that there is urgency. If StopCovid arrived poorly tied up and too late to help during the first wave, these failures could better prepare for a possible second wave of the epidemic which, with the rebound of contamination in China, has gained credibility.

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