The StopCovid app is expected to be available on June 2, after more than a month of debate and controversy. By allowing the tracing of the contacts of its users, it is supposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in France.
Promised by the government more than a month ago, the StopCovid application is launched after being accepted by Parliament May 27. This technological tool for tracing contacts should make it possible to slow the spread of the pandemic of coronavirus in France.
How it works ?
StopCovid allows, in the event of contamination, to automatically warn people who have been in contact with the patient.
To function, the application provides smartphones with encrypted identifiers. Each device remembers the encrypted identifiers of the crossed smartphones, provided that the two people were standing less than a meter away and for more than fifteen minutes.
The user who discovers his contamination indicates it on StopCovid, which then communicates to the central application system the list of all encrypted identifiers crossed over the past two weeks.
These people are then alerted by the application to the fact that they have encountered someone who is sick, but without knowing their identity. Once warned, users should take precautions and avoid further contamination.
Under what conditions will it reach its goal?
StopCovid is offered to French people on a voluntary basis. The challenge therefore lies in the number of people who will agree to download it.
However, 77% of French people have a smartphone, but this figure drops sharply for the elderly, who are the most vulnerable to the disease.
For the moment, there is no incontestable evidence establishing the effectiveness of such a device. But for government, StopCovid can have a positive effect from the first downloads “,
by breaking chains of contamination that wouldn’t have been detected without it.
Why is StopCovid so criticized?
In principle, it carries an obvious risk for privacy, since it involves registering an identifier of all the people we come across and performing automated processing on these identifiers.
Digital specialists and lawyers see it as the beginnings of a surveillance society, where algorithms know everything about us.
The government for its part assures that all the necessary guarantees have been provided for the data collected. The Cnil (National Commission for Data Protection) has given the green light to the application, considering that it did not contravene the legislative provisions in force.
– .
