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TOPIC: General Studies 3:
- Technology to fight COVID-19
Aarogya Setu: On April 2, 2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) launched Aarogya Setu, a Covid-19 contact tracing app, mandatory for those employed in private and public offices. The app provides the ability to identify and analyse a person’s risk of a Covid-19 infection, alert them early, and offer medical support and resources. Additionally, the data is useful for the government to identify emerging hotspots.
Data might prove to be our best bet in the battle against this global pandemic. Hence, Aarogya Setu application!
How does it work?
What data can be collected and shared by Aarogya Setu?
The data collected by the Aarogya Setu app is broadly divided into four categories — demographic data, contact data, self-assessment data and location data. This is collectively called response data.
What are the checks and balances?
The protocol says the response data that can be shared with ministries, government departments and other administrative agencies has to be in de-identified form. This means that, except for demographic data, the response data must be stripped of information that may make it possible to identify the individual personally; it must be assigned a randomly generated ID.
Further, the NIC shall, “to the extent reasonable”, document the sharing of any data and maintain a list of the agencies with which data has been shared. This documentation will include the time at which data sharing was initiated, with which entities it was shared, the categories of such data, and the purpose of sharing the data.
The protocol also calls for any entity with which the data has been shared to not retain the data beyond 180 days from the day it was collected. The protocol reads back to the Disaster Management Act, 2005 to establish the penalties in case of violation of the protocol. It also has a sunset clause, which calls for the empowered group to review the protocol after six months; unless extended, it will be in force only for six months from the date of issue.
As an open-source software
Government has released the source code of Aarogya Setu app to promote transparency and collaboration with the software developer community.
Software can be divided into two broad categories, proprietary and open source.
Why has the source code of Aarogya Setu been made public?
When launching the app on April 2, the IT ministry had explicitly mentioned in the terms of use that no one was allowed to reverse-engineer the app or alter with the coding of the app. This led to critics questioning whether the app could be used for surveillance and go beyond its mandate of contact tracing. Cyber law experts and the software developer community called upon the government to allow reverse engineering and also publish the source code of the app so that it could be seen by anyone.
This will restore some faith in skeptical minds as they can now read and understand the code for themselves. It will also help in assuaging the data privacy and security concerns surrounding the app.
The Way Forward
The government must take utmost precautions in securing our data and ensure sensitive information does not land in the hands of unauthorised players who may misuse it.
Enhancing the app’s ease-of-use, increasing the user base, and analysing the resulting aggregated, anonymised data will help Indians and the world overcome the Covid-19 crisis.
Connecting the Dots: