She was not ready and had even disappeared from the deconfinement plans, but here is the mobile application "StopCovid". Developed by the government, it is intended to warn us when we have been in contact with a coronavirus patient. Despite discussions with Apple and Google, the Secretary of State for Digital has decided to go it alone. As a result, StopCovid could be deployed as early as June 2. But the application still raises a lot of questions, especially around data security. Europe 1 explains the ins and outs of this complex project.
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France does without Apple and Google
The operation of StopCovid is technical but can be summarized as follows: the application will use the bluetooth of your mobile phone to determine if you have encountered a person who also installed the application and who declared themselves as sick. If this happens, you will be alerted and asked to be tested. If you are diagnosed yourself, you can report it in the application. It is indeed a "tracing" tool, based on volunteering, but the data is anonymized: at no time is your name transmitted to anyone, any more than your geolocation.
In practice, it is more complicated. To work, StopCovid needs to be activated as soon as you meet people. It should therefore be able to run in the background of the phone. Except that Google and Apple, which manage Android and iOS respectively, the only two operating systems for smartphones, prohibit this practice. "It ruins the battery and poses serious security concerns," Apple reports. Despite everything, to help States, the two digital giants have allied themselves and have developed an API, a common base, to facilitate the development of "tracing" applications despite this constraint. A base adopted by several countries but rejected by France.
Two weeks of testing
"It is not certain that going through Apple and Google would have saved us time (and) their solution did not sufficiently protect users against certain types of computer attacks," defends Cédric O at the microphone of Europe 1. " We made a choice in favor of protecting freedoms. " France feared that data from StopCovid, even anonymized, would be stored by the two American giants. "We asked Apple to unblock the use of bluetooth. They did not want to," said one at the office of Cédric O. Result, a new watchword: "Health is 'State business, not American business'.
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Without the solution from Apple and Google, France therefore faces a huge technological challenge. "We are confident that the application will work on all phones, including the iPhone," insists Cédric O, without saying more. Starting this week, technical tests will therefore be carried out. Then, the week of May 11, there will be first tests "under cover", to reproduce everyday situations. Objective, for example: to check the system for bluetooth tracking in a crowd, as found in public transport. Finally, the week of May 18, tests will be conducted in real conditions with volunteers.
An application "useful from the first downloads"
If these tests are conclusive, the application will be submitted to Parliament around May 25 and, subject to a favorable vote, deployed from June 2. But for what use, knowing that it is based on volunteering? "According to epidemiological models, from the first downloads, it is useful," says Cédric O. "The application covers cases of contamination that are impossible to spot, those in the back of the supermarket, in public transport. where you could be infected without knowing it or who may have transmitted the virus to you. "
Even if cities with a high concentration of populations are clearly a priority target, the Secretary of State invites all French people to download the application when it is available. "It is a question of individual but also collective protection. The objective is to prevent a fire from starting, to identify potential patients, to test them and to quarantine them if necessary", he insists. And if widely adopted nationally, StopCovid could even, he said, help "avoid further containment".
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The State Secretariat for Digital Affairs, which is piloting the project, therefore has two weeks to set up the application. To achieve this, it is supported by Inria, the National Research Institute for Digital Science and Technology, with the help of Inserm, the Pasteur Institute, Public Health France and some twenty d companies including Capgemini, Dassault Systèmes and Orange.