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Still not ready, the StopCovid application will be voted on in the National Assembly

Before the National Assembly, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced that the StopCovid application, designed by the government to monitoring people infected with coronavirus, was still under development, and that its launch will be the subject of a debate and a vote before parliamentarians.

Unlike theGermany or Great Britain, and unless there is a miracle in the next ten days, France will not have a application of "tracing the population" at the end of the confinement planned for May 11. It was Prime Minister Edouard Philippe who announced this Tuesday during his speech before theNational Assembly.

Announced a month ago, StopCovid is still not ready, and the procrastination is numerous since France has decided to turn the back at the solution developed by Google and Apple, and the showdown with Apple to make it compatible with the Bluetooth of iPhone obviously doesn't help matters.

A debate then a vote

Another obstacle, and it is a major one: the application will be the subject of a parliamentary debate, and therefore of a vote. This is what the opposition was demanding, but also more generally those who were worried about a drift for individual freedoms. " Given the uncertainties about this application, I would be hard pressed to tell you if it works, and how it will work precisely. So it seems to me that this debate is premature "Said Edouard Philippe before the deputies. " But I confirm my commitment: when the application under development will work and before its implementation, we will organize a specific debate, followed by a specific vote. "

No date is therefore advanced, and even if the CNIL has validated in broad terms the functioning of StopCovid, this application will only be really useful if it is coupled with mass tests of people in contact with a patient and systematic quarantines.

StopCovid application: France stands apart and that poses a problem

Like Britain, France turns its back on the technical solution developed by Apple and Google for the anonymous tracking of the population emerging from confinement. A technological choice which is based on the "centralization" of the data of StopCovid users and which is incompatible in the state with the iPhone.

Posted on 04/27/20 by Fabrice Auclert

Does the app StopCovid will be ready on May 11 to trace the population at the end of confinement? The more the days pass, the more complicated it seems. Questioned by the Sunday newspaper, the secretary of state for digital, Cédric O, recognizes that it will be a “challenge” to achieve it, and according to him, the problem would come from the incompatibility with the Bluetooth of the iPhone, that is to say 20% of the smartphones in circulation in France. Can France do without Apple for such a serious subject as pandemic ?

The answer would be "yes" since the government hopes to make Apple fold. " It is the mission of the State to protect the French "Reminds Cédric O, who adds:" It is therefore on its own to define health policy, to decide the algorithm which defines a contact or even the technological architecture which will best protect data and public freedoms. "

Germany joins Apple and Google

The problem is that France finds itself isolated by its choice of a proprietary technology, developed in the company of Withings, Orange or Dassault. Sunday,Germany has decided to back off and join the system put in place by Apple and Google. Noting that Apple would not unlock its iPhones, Chancellery Minister Helge Braun and Health Minister Jens Spahn thus confirmed that their country was opting for a “decentralized” approach to finding digital contacts, abandoning their solution which would have given health authorities central control over tracking data.

The “centralization” of data is the whole issue of population tracking applications. Who says "centralization" says " server »Where user data is stored. Decentralization ", advocated by Apple and Google, is based on data stored in the phone, and it gives the user the choice to share his personal data, such as his state of health, with the health authorities.

The CNIL awaits the parliamentary debate to give a final opinion

On the French side, but also in Great Britain, we defend "centralization" and for the French government, " it is a question of health and technological sovereignty. StopCovid will be the only application fully integrated into the health response of the French State. That closes the debate Loose Cedric O, still in the JDD. A “debate” may have ended on the technology side, but which has only just begun on the level of ethics and individual freedoms.

In a press release published on Sunday, the National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) thus considers that " the device complies with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) if certain conditions are met " But she " request certain additional guarantees "And" makes technical recommendations », In particular that this application is compatible with as many smartphones as possible, including the iPhone. The CNIL also insists that " the voluntary nature of the use of the application should be explicitly provided for in the legal texts governing this device as in the information of the public and no negative consequence of should be attached to the absence of downloading or use of the application "

The CNIL is waiting for the debate in Parliament, scheduled for Tuesday, April 28, to issue a final opinion, and requests that the exceptional and temporary nature of this type of application be enshrined in national law to prevent the tracing of the population does not exceed the framework of theepidemic, and will not expand to other applications in the future.

StopCovid, the French application to track Covid-19 patients, is behind schedule

The government unveiled the main lines of its smartphone application on Wednesday which will be used to follow the sick but also to alert people in contact with contaminated cases. The problem is that it is not ready.

Posted on 09/04/20 by Fabrice Auclert

Considered an essential tool in the fight against the epidemic and the monitoring of infected people, the smartphone application is already used in South Korea, Singapore, China and even in Germany since Tuesday. France intends to do the same, except that it is not ready, and it will not be in the short term!

Unveiled Wednesday StopCovid Is only at the beginning of its development. " It still needs to be developed, it will take at least several weeks to do everything Recognized the Secretary of State for digital Cédric O on the antenna of France Inter. He detailed its future operation and, as expected, it is to warn users that they have been in contact with a person with coronavirus. Objective: that the person, informed via an alert on their smartphone, can arrange to be tested, and possibly stay at health home in confinement if the Review is positive.

Bluetooth at the heart of the application

In addition to its availability, always unknown, the big question concerns personal data, both in the geolocation of trips but also of the contact details of the person. For the first concern, Cedric O recalls that “ the Bluetooth allows it to be completely anonymous while measuring the distances (between users). This is something that is available on almost all mobile phones, and above all that does not geotag people: it will not track your trips. "

However, it should be noted that, as it stands, Bluetooth does not allow the distance between two people to be given precisely. Bluetooth works over short distances, from a few centimeters to a few meters, but all of the development work concerns the possibility of issuing an alert when this distance is too short, two meters or less.

Where will personal data be stored?

On the person's contact details, and to respond to the concerns of the CNIL and more generally from the European Commission, he ensures that " this is anonymized data, which is deleted after a certain time " According to him : " the application will be installed on a voluntary basis, and no one will be able to trace either who was infected or who infected who. The fact remains that inevitably, there will be "data" stored on a server since the objective is both to follow the progression of the epidemic after confinement, but also to warn the population.

On this information storage, it remains unclear: " Data is stored, anonymized, inaccessible to anyone, and in the most decentralized way possible: namely rather on your phone than on a central server. »To be checked when launching this application, the use of which will be temporary, and reserved only for this epidemic. Another outstanding question: how to integrate the healed people?

Covid-19: France wants an application to trace the sick like in South Korea

How to prevent the coronavirus epidemic from resuming when containment is completed? Like South Korea, Singapore and other European countries, France will try to bet on an application that identifies the sick and warns potential victims.

Posted on 02/04/20 by Fabrice Auclert

Heard Wednesday before the new fact-finding mission of the National Assembly, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and the Minister of Health Olivier Véran spoke of the end containment in France. Uncertainty remains on the date and the progress, but what we have learned, and contrary to what the government announced on March 24, is that the idea of ​​an application to follow the sick is more in more concrete.

More precisely, it would be a matter of monitoring patients and suspected cases on a daily basis, but also of identifying potential victims who may have been in contact with these patients. This is the choice made by Singapore and South Korea and, privacy protection requires, it would be based on volunteering. Attention, people would not be identifiable or trackable via the chip GPS from their smartphone or relay antennas as was able to do Orange a few weeks ago, we have to identify them anonymously to eyes of the other people they will meet.

Trace together does not access the user's contacts or their geolocation data. © Farah's Podcast

Singapore as a benchmark

In France, as in Germany or the United States for that matter, we are focusing on the development of an application similar to " Trace together Used in Singapore. It's the Bluetooth which is at the heart of the identification system for patients and potential contaminates. As we know, the range of Bluetooth is a few meters, and when activated on phones, it allows you to "see" other phones, or any other smart health connected device, around you. In Singapore, this application thus allows a person to know if they have encountered an infected person, all anonymously. It's even retroactive: if a person is tested positive a posteriori, the people who had met her a few days ago are warned, and invited to stay at health home or to take a Review.

The data is then erased after 21 days, the purpose of this application is to identify homes of contagion and to circumscribe them quickly. In South Korea and Singapore it seems to be working, and the good news is that the developers of Trace together have decided to put their application code in open-source.

Coronavirus patients soon tracked by cell phone

On the initiative of the European Commission, the largest mobile operators have agreed to provide access to geolocation data for tens of millions of Europeans. Objective: follow the movements of people tested positive to anticipate contaminations.

Posted on 26 March 2020 by Fabrice Auclert

After having done pressure on the big players in entertainment andInternet to limit the debits and to prevent the network from saturating during the health crisis, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Digital Technology Thierry Breton has a new workhorse: monitoring patients with coronavirus through their smartphones. More exactly, according to Reuters, it is a question of following the people having been in contact with a positive tested person, but also to follow the possible displacements of the people carrying the virus.

Following their interview with Thierry Breton, Orange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and five other mobile phone operators, including Telecom Italia, agreed to share their data with the European Commission. geolocation collected through mobile phones. The Commission is responsible for aggregating and compiling this data to take measures to stem the spread of the virus. Thanks to GPS chips, it is thus possible to see the “migrations” of infected people across the country, and thus to anticipate peaks of contamination in certain regions.

The CNIL claims the anonymity of the data collected

Obviously, this "tracking" of patients via the GPS chip on their smartphone is not without problems, and the National Commission for Data Protection (Cnil) calls on the authorities to " favor the processing of anonymized data »According to internal letters which became known Mediapart. On the French side, more specifically, the State has set up Care, a commission made up of researchers and doctors, one of whose missions concerns " the advisability of implementing a digital strategy for identifying people who have been in contact with infected people ”.

On the side of the European Commission, we assure that the data collected will be destroyed once the health crisis is over, and it is Europe, and not the operators, which is responsible for respecting the GDPR. Clearly, mobile operators, one per country, will not be penalized for possible non-compliance with personal data.

In Asia, the smartphone turns into an “electronic bracelet”

This initiative is not new in the face of the coronavirus crisis since the South Korea, Russia or recently Israel have also chosen to take advantage of the geolocation of smartphones to follow the sick, and especially to monitoring them. In Asia, it goes even further since the inhabitants have to install an application. In Taiwan or Singapore, for example, the smartphone of a quarantined person has everything of an electronic bracelet since an application makes it possible to verify that he stays at health home, and in the event of an infraction, the fine is steep and his name is exposed to the general public.

In China, each city has its own application, and the inhabitants must take their temperature every morning and give information on their state of health. Once on the street, the authorities scan their smartphones, and the data is recorded and identified. This is obviously what some associations fear in Europe, but Europe ensures that everything will remain anonymous, and France has already warned that there was no question of creating an application. As for theWHO, she plans to create her own application that provides advice, but also allows a person to know the rate of patients in his district or region.

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