A group of European scientists and technology experts announced, on Wednesday 1 April, that they have developed a code to create an application to track people infected with the new coronavirus. This code, the group said, is respectful of privacy.
This work is the result of a collaboration between 130 researchers from eight countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Spain.
The platform, entitled Pan-European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), is funded by donations, notes the journal Politico. According to Hans-Christian Boos, founder of the business automation company Arago and a member of a digital advisory council to the German government, it remains open to new countries, including outside the continent.
“The PEPP-PT platform others can build on includes an anonymous and privacy-preserving digital proximity tracing approach, which is in full compliance with GDPR [data protection] and can also be used when travelling between different countries”, he also told Reuters.
The code will make it possible to analyse Bluetooth signals emitted by mobile phones in order to carry out “contact tracing”, a method which consists of tracing the history of a patient who is ill with COVID-19 and identifying all the contacts he or she may have had in a country and elsewhere.
In the event that an individual tests positive, the app would notify all persons with whom the individual has been in contact in the previous days.
In terms of privacy, downloading the app will be voluntary and the code would make it virtually impossible to reveal the identity of the people using the devices. According to its designers, two phones will never exchange data directly and user aliases will be changed frequently.
Pirate MEP Patrick Breyer (Greens/EFA, Germany) made no secret of his concern at the announcement of such a scheme. He said that even if confidentiality rules are respected, a tracing application risks spreading panic among people identified as "nearby", who may not all be able to be tested. It may also mislead the user into believing that he or she is "protected". Finally, the MEP questions the voluntary nature of the new system, given the direction in which certain democracies are turning to and the surveillance policies that are becoming more and more prevalent. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)