STOP COVID. The application of tracing that the government intends to put in place is still facing significant technical challenges and policies, then a review Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, may 27,…
Summary Operating StopCovid personal Data and freedoms, Debate and vote at the Meeting Volunteering and anonymity protocol “ROBERT” Google, Apple, and iOS Opinion of the Cnil release Date pushed back A bracelet connected to What effectiveness ?
[updated on may 20, 2020 at 19h24] The date for the great explanation is now known. This is the Wednesday, may 27 the deputies will be invited to discuss, in the national Assembly, of the application StopCovid. This application, voluntary and provisional, must allow, once installed on smartphones, to establish connections between its users and the alert among them the contacts of those who will be tested positive for the coronavirus. A warning that will allow them to consult with a doctor and isolate themselves pending the results of a screening test.
A debate on this project has been widely discussed had already been announced last month, the 28 April, but was postponed in extremis by the Prime minister Edouard Philippe, considering that the app was not quite ready to be presented to the elected officials. Because the application StopCovid is still in the cartons, so that the déconfinement is launched for a few days now. The reason : a series of technical and political difficulties of turning all on issues around the protection of civil liberties and personal data.
The implementation of this tool, contact tracing that the government is in the process of finalizing with several european partners, and the national Institute for research in computer science and control (Inria) is much more complex than initially announced. Back on the chaotic path of StopCovid and questions that it has exacerbated.
How will the application StopCovid ?
The minister of Health Olivier Véran and the secretary of State of the Digital Cedric O had granted a long interview to the World right from the Wednesday, April 8, to discuss the project of tracking, or digital traces, to better control the outbreak of coronavirus and, in particular, prevent new outbreaks occur at the end of the confinement. They had explained the principle in the guidelines : “develop an application that could limit the spread of the virus by identifying the chains of transmission. The idea would be to prevent people who have been in contact with a patient tested positive, so they test themselves, and if need be, that they are taken in charge very early, or they confine themselves”, stated Cedric O in this interview.
“We are at an exploratory phase, but we do not want to close any doors”, were also the two ministers who have detailed a little more precisely the functioning of the application StopCovid : “when two people cross paths during a certain period of time, and at a close distance, the mobile phone of the a record the references of the other in its history”. “If a positive case is found, those who have been in contact with this person are defendants in an automatic way”, said then Cedric O. The latter had boasted in The World this concept of “contact tracing,” which “allowed to go back to patient sources, to identify strings of contamination and to curb the spread of the epidemic” in some countries.
The challenge of this application, developed at the national Institute of research in sciences and technologies of the digital (Inria), with several european partners, is particularly important. A tracking of the population could prevent the déconfinement not be synonymous with the second wave of the epidemic. Cedric O has, however, also stated from the outset that StopCovid is only a “brick – also uncertain – of a comprehensive strategy to déconfinement and a digital tool among others in the fight against the epidemic”. Since 11 may, moreover, these are brigades human “contact tracing” that have been put in place, personnel dedicated to the research of the “contacts” of patients tested positive. The application, itself, has still not seen the light of day.
A debate on the personal data and liberties
The idea of a digital traces, but also of its potential excesses, been lurking for a long time in the mind of the executive and the opposition. Emmanuel Macron has put in place as early as mid-march a committee of experts, the Committee analyses, research and expertise (Care), responsible, in particular, to think of a “digital strategy for the identification of persons who have been in contact with infected people”. During his hearing before the fact-finding mission on the coronavirus of the Assembly on the 1st of April, Edouard Philippe had referred to a plot “voluntary” in France. “It is necessary to explore all the doors open, full of technologies may prove to be useful”, wore it already at Matignon. On the same day, Cedric O was also confirmed that the government was studying this kind of device.
But this long preparation of the opinion has not prevented the debate from exploding, including within the majority, as reported by le Parisien as of Tuesday 7 April. The same in Paris has published the following day an interview with Stéphane Séjourné, mep LREM and a former adviser Emmanuel Macron, who believed tracing digital was to “acknowledge that authoritarian regimes are better equipped than democracies to respond to the crisis”. The former political advisor to the presidency of the Republic did not hesitate to speak of “Big Brother” and urged the government to keep “this philosophy based on the respect of rules and confidence in individuals.”
Several other members of the majority have since shown that they were wind standing against the application, some wondering even if they were not going to slam the door LREM if the app were to be adopted. The departure of Aurelian Tache of the group LREM to the Assembly in mid-may is probably not totally foreign to the application project StopCovid, the mp for the Val-d’oise, who also heard his disagreement with this topic since the beginning of the crisis of the sars coronavirus.
in Addition to the doubts in the majority, all groups of the opposition have also expressed their dissatisfaction on StopCovid. Communist party, France, rebellious, socialist Party, Europe-Ecologie-The Greens, UDI, The Republicans, Rally the national… Of the extreme left to the extreme right, all want to have their say on this tool presented bearing there is little by the executive as a key element of the strategy of déconfinement French.
A debate and a vote, already pushed back to the Assembly
It is therefore up to 15 times, Wednesday, may 27, that the parliamentary debate will finally be held more than two weeks after the beginning of the déconfinement. And the vote could prove tricky. “The executive was calling for a very high abstention rate in the next mps LREM, which, in the end, suggested a narrow majority in favour of the application,” wrote the newspaper Les Echos as of Sunday, April 26. Since then, The Republic in march has lost the absolute majority in the national Assembly, particularly after the departure of Aurelian Tache. A ninth political group composed of 17 deputies macronistes and former “walkers” has been created under the name “Ecology democracy solidarity”. Presented as “independent”, “neither in the majority or in the opposition”, he has many opponents to the project StopCovid.
Prior to the date of 27 may, the app tracking to digital was originally scheduled to be discussed Tuesday, April 28, at the national Assembly, in the plane of déconfinement presented by Edouard Philippe to the deputies. Originally, StopCovid should even be the subject of a debate and a vote dedicated within the Palais Bourbon. It has, however, been completely ruled out of discussions by the Prime minister, without a lot of mercy on that day. Edouard Philippe has made while “taking into account the uncertainties” on StopCovid, it was “good just to say […] how it will work precisely”. “I have no doubt that the engineers will work hard and succeed to run this project”, had already indicated the head of government, promising the appropriate “a specific debate followed by a voting-specific”. But he also recognized that the numerous reviews received by the app were based”.
Volunteerism and anonymity meets the government
“It is important to keep the fantasy of an application to be liberticidal. Our hypothesis is that a tool deliberately installed and which can be uninstalled at any time. The data would be anonymous and deleted after a given period of time,” replied the World’s Cedric O to the detractors of StopCovid as early as 8 April. Main guarantee displayed by the defenders of the tool contact tracing : the mobile application will be based on a voluntary by the users of smartphones and the Bluetooth communication that allows you to retain anonymity. The Bluetooth is cited since the beginning of the project as a compromise between efficiency of the app and personal data protection. This standard of communication would be more gentle than a GPS tracking, which would provide fewer guarantees in terms of anonymity, or that a demarcation telephone, making a call to the base stations of the operators.
The secretary of State to Digital has reiterated on 11 April in the Grand evening news of Europe 1 : “The application that we develop in connection with the Germans (who have since left the ship – ED) and the Swiss is completely respectful of our values, our laws, privacy, and it does not give any data”, he said. “The facility will be voluntary, the temporarily stored data, and the total anonymity. Not even the State will not be able to trace the contaminated people”. In the JDD Sunday, April 26, he again hammered home that this application will be “voluntary, anonymous, transparent and temporary.” “The State does not have access to any data identifier, and there will be no geo-location”. “The installation of the application should address fully the free and full consent”, insisted the secretary of State. “In the arbitration between stress and health individual liberties, we pushed all the way to the freedom of the individual”, could it be argued.
To recall, in his remarks Monday, April 13, Emmanuel Macron had also accompanied his speech on the application of tracking warnings. “You should not neglect any track, any innovation,” said the president of the Republic, adding immediately that “this epidemic does not weaken our democracy nor bite on any liberté” calling for a “digital application dedicated […] on a voluntary basis and anonymity”. Edouard Philippe has already said that he was opposed to a tracking “mandatory” and that it would be more open to an installed application on the basis of a “voluntary commitment”, the idea being not to create a “Big Brother”.
A long argument in favour of StopCovid
The plan of com’ was again reinforced on may 3 with the publication, by the same Cedric O, a long post on the platform Medium. On the merits, it is estimated that StopCovid will be invaluable, with other tools, to avoid a rebound of the epidemic in the déconfinement. It is necessary, according to him, “do everything to cut the ‘departures of fire’ as quickly as possible, including the use of digital tools as ‘StopCovid’, in a highly supervised and proportionate”. The digital solution would be highly useful according to him, “in the urban centres […], public transport, public places, or shops”, where the human resources will not allow us to reconstruct the channels of transmission as effectively as the processing of data.
Each course can “opt-out of these tools for philosophical reasons” , but that would mean “in this case” to “accept a significant risk of sick and dead extra”, also prevents Cedric O who says that StopCovid “is not a monitoring application”, “is not an application to tracking” in the sense of geolocation, “is not an application of denunciation”, “is not compulsory”, “there is nothing a black box”, and would even many safeguards.
The protocol “ROBERT” in question
for the sake of transparency, the source code of the app has been unveiled as part of the Tuesday, may 12, “so that all the coders interested” can “go and check how the application works” and in particular, whether a risk of diversion for purposes of monitoring of the population is found has also shown Cedric O. “other lines of codes will be published in the coming weeks,” he added, stating also that StopCovid is entered “test laboratory” before the “field test”. The source code is available on the Gitlab Inria a site that allows coders and developers to share their work. There is a question in particular of the protocol used, called “ROBERT” (for “ROBust and privacy-presERving proximity Tracing”), which is at the heart of the application.
also Read
A presentation of the protocol, ROBERT on 18 April on the website of the Inria another document of the Inria on the protocol, ROBERT a PDF of The details of the protocol by ROBERT on the Gitlab Inria
researchers franco-germans, who also had published as early as mid-April some technical details on the app StopCovid, have confirmed that the protocol to ROBERT, does not use geo-location data of the smartphone, but the Bluetooth technology. It will allow “the sharing, by the persons detected positive Covid-19, a list of anonymous identifiers corresponding to the people that they have to cross during the incubation period of the virus”. Concretely, a server will generate the codes anonymous, which will be disseminated at the interactions between users to allow then to alert the right people if one of them is tested positive for the coronavirus.
The catch is that this server provided by the protocol ROBERT will reference each user in a central database in the form of a unique identifier. A system judged to be very (too ?) “centralized” by several experts, who argue that it makes possible a control of the tool by its owner, namely the State. Among the main opponents of the centralized system is a protagonist of size : Apple, supporter for its share of a “decentralized”. The american giant would also be repelled by the diffusion in the background (in other words when the user is not viewing the app) of the famous codes anonymous generated via Bluetooth. A detail that directly contradicts the model of security of its system iOS, used to protect the data of its users. However, this work in the background seems essential to make the connection between the users even when the app is not open or when the phone is locked at the bottom of a pocket.
The iron arms of France in the face of Apple and iOS
To solve part of this problem, Apple and Google have announced Friday, 10th of April a partnership “with the aim of helping governments and health agencies to reduce the spread of the virus”, but “integrating the privacy and security of the users at the heart of the design”. Their solution, “decentralized”, is so incompatible at this point with StopCovid, which could prevent the app French to be installed on the iPhone. Questioned in the Senate on this issue in mid-April, Aymeril Hoang, former director of the cabinet of Mounir Mahjoubi Digital and adviser to the government, has pleaded for the sovereignty and warned against the “turnkey solution” of the two giants. Arguments repeated, word for word, or almost by Cedric O who was confirmed as soon as April 20, before the Senate’s law commission that the model proposed by France had not been accepted by the firm of Cupertino.
In the Sunday Newspaper of 26 April, as on BFMTV on Tuesday, may 5, the secretary of State to Digital has confirmed that France was still “in discussion with Apple,” but that it did not intend to yield to the injunctions of the u.s. firm, believing that “the ma&hererc;mastering the health system, the fight against the coronavirus, it is the business of the States” and the option “centralized” brought as much guarantee of security as the “decentralized” advocated by the two giants of the digital world. “There is indeed the solution proposed by Apple and Google that application as we have a number of problems in terms of privacy and in terms of interconnection with the health-care system”, he still pointed to the beginning of may on Medium or even on BFMTV. “It is for these problems, not because Apple and Google are villains, that we refused to go through their solutions”, added the secretary of State.
beyond The political speeches, the control of data is at the heart of the problem. Access to the metadata, that is to say, the anonymized recordings made by StopCovid may also allow the government and its health authorities to measure the evolution of the epidemic in a geographic scale is very fine. If the keys were given to Apple and Google, the government could say goodbye to these datas and therefore, in this analysis.
A possible work-arounds ?
If both Google and Apple have banned any new application taking advantage of the crisis of the sars coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, we could expect that a application government would be more welcomed by the two american giants. But never Apple didn’t bow to a government, was-t-he in the United States. Sunday, April 26, the German government has therefore announced that he réorientait its project application to adopt a more “decentralized”. But this is not the case of France, which remains braced on his solution. Cedric O has even promised the beginning of may on BFMTV “a solution that will work very satisfactorily on all the phones” and that Stop Covid “works very well on iPhone.”
The solution is mentioned at this stage is that of a bypass. “Like what was presented to the NHS of the uk, the French hope to be able to partially circumvent the restrictions of american software”, wrote the newspaper Les Echos that evokes an app going background tasks, Bluetooth, but that is likely to “wake up” when an iPhone goes near another. A solution that is very consuming battery and imperfect.
An app is already validated with the tip of the lips by the Cnil
To implement such a tool, the government will not be able to go without the favourable opinion of the national Commission on informatics and liberties (Cnil), which governs in France, the protection of personal data. The latter has already announced his verdict Sunday, April 26, in a first notice available on its website. The members of the college of the Cnil considered that “the application can be deployed, in accordance with the general regulation of data protection (RGPD), if its utility for the management of the crisis is sufficiently ascertained, and if certain guarantees are made.” The commission nonetheless called on the government to “use great caution”, considering that the app StopCovid risk of generating a “phenomenon of addiction” to the devices for tracking. She reminds us that this type of application raises “novel questions in terms of protection of private life”.
Interviewed by the Senate on Wednesday, April 15, the president of the Cnil, Marie-Laure Denis, had already urged the government to make the application “temporary”. “It is really necessary that its duration does not exceed the duration necessary for the treatment of the health crisis”, said the president of the Cnil, referring also to “protection of personal data”, “data deletion”, the essential possibility of being able to uninstall the app and that the consent is “informed”. “The refusal to download the application will not reduce your ability to move”, she added.
A new hearing of Marie-Laure Denis was held Tuesday, may 5 at the national Assembly. She indicated to mps that the Cnil as it heads had already begun to dissect the project StopCovid, and that the commission will be “particularly attentive to the duration of conservation of data”, as well as to their “relevance”. The president of the Cnil requires that the data be “deleted within a fairly short, well before the end of the epidemic”. It is also a concern of the brigades health that are already in place and will work in addition to the application to the research of case contacts. “It will be necessary to give instructions very clear to the interviewers what they can ask and then collect”, she said. The presence of “free fields where they would put information that is not necessary” in the questionnaires should be avoided.
When the app StopCovid will she be ready ?
in the Face of all these difficulties, the release date of the application StopCovid could only be delayed. This was finally confirmed in hollow Cedric O on the platform Medium on Sunday, may 3, as on BFMTV on Tuesday, may 5, in announcing a release date on 2 June, for the second phase of the déconfinement. “We are following our roadmap. We hope to have something for the June 2”, indicated the secretary of State on the chain info. Cedric O, it must first “ensure that on the ground it works very well, it shall notify not too much, it is well-interconnected with the whole system sanitaire, but today we can say that we will be ready for the June 2”.
The secretary of State said, however at the beginning of April that its app could come out “soon”. “The task force is hard at work for several days to develop a prototype, but I can’t tell you if it will take us three to six weeks to develop”, indicated by the secretary of State in the World on 8 April. In Les Echos on April 1st, he believed it was possible a development “in a fortnight”. The time of development by an agency of the State or by a service provider was assessed at ten days. These deadlines are very optimistic, therefore, have been revised upward, Cedric O indicating as early as Friday, April 17, that StopCovid would not be ready for his examination before Parliament on the 28th. A review that finally proceeded without it…
The deadline of 11 may, the date of the beginning of the déconfinement, has not been held. On France info on Monday, 20 April, the spokesman of the government Sibeth Ndiaye had however indicated that “the ideal is that this is an application that is ready for the 11 may. “I don’t have the certainty, it has been hard”, she added. “The goal is to be ready for the may 11, but it is a challenge”, because “there are still several technical problems to solve” and “we will not compromise on safety”, for its part, had added Cedric O in his interview with the Newspaper of Sunday the 26th of April. The delay will be, therefore, quite widely exceeded.
A wrist strap connected also in preparation
According to Les Echos, “multiple regions”, anxious, appeared to be ready mid-April to test another application that was developed this time “by Orange and five other French groups”. Orange, Capgemini and Dassault System had in fact started work on an app, that they felt able to launch as soon as April 20. Finally, they have joined the project StopCovid since. The same journal also showed a bracelet of tracking developed by a company specializing in networks for telecom low-speed, Sigfox. The bracelet would be independent of a smartphone and the 5G. A guarantee in terms of data recovery. This solution, which would be to “pass through connected objects that do not depend on Android or iOs,” has also been evoked also by Aymeril Hoang. But he considers this workaround “more complex, more expensive” and therefore asking for “more time”.
Even the sound of a bell at Cedric O who sees it as a solution for those who do not have smartphone. On BFMTV on may 5, the secretary of State has even confided that”part of the team is dedicated to try to find another solution — for example, a box or a bracelet that would go to the phones”. But he warned : the development of such a solution will take more time than the application StopCovid, ” has minimum of a couple of extra weeks “. The use of ultrasound in a second version of the application is also on the table according to the Journal du Net.
The effectiveness of StopCovid very uncertain
there is one last fundamental question : StopCovid will it be really effective in the fight against a new epidemic wave of coronavirus ? In The World April 8, Cedric O called on the French to “keep a fantasy opposite, the one of the application that magic would solve everything. There is a technological uncertainty, and this is only a brick an option in an overall strategy of déconfinement”. The chairman of the scientific Council in charge of advising the government on the Covid-19 was also expressed reservations before the Senate as early as 15 April. Jean-François Delfraissy believed that it would be necessary to complete the app by human means of tracing and monitoring of the epidemic on the ground. “The Koreans have a squad of 20 000 people to track down contacts. There is a human behind the digital. But it does not in France. If it has not, an app for digital will not work”, said the professor, who has since made a recommendation in this sense.
The scientific Council has indicated in a notice made public on Saturday, April 25, that it was necessary that “mobile teams contact tracing, and isolation” are put in place, “in particular to target populations in remote or insecure or in the case of outbreaks of transmission (clusters)”. These teams would be “complementary platforms” as StopCovid and “would be coordinated with a direct link to it”, wrote the experts. “In support of the app, it takes a very wide use of tests for the persons having crossed a sick person”, added Jean-François Delfraissy. Cedric O when indicated in the JJD on April 26, that StopCovid would be an element of the system sanitary surveys, which is at the heart of the déconfinement, in order to avoid the epidemic spread”. These brigades have been confirmed by Edouard Philippe the presentation of the plan of déconfinement on 28 April and began work on may 11.
