Coronavirus in Argentina: the Government analyzes changes in the official app, to limit the monitoring of people

05/11/2020 - 20:21

• Clarín.com
• Politics

Government officials analyze a series of modifications to the CuidAR application, after strong criticism from the opposition. The most important change, which gains strength within the national government as the hours go by, would be to remove the possibility of “always” tracking the user , so that the application can only send the location data of each person when using the application, but not the rest of the time.

According to official sources, that change would be practically resolved and could be implemented next week, if he obtains the authorization of the Chief of Staff, Santiago Cafiero, who is the one who administers and manages the data of the CuidAR app, through the Secretariat. of Public Innovation.

This change would be made due to strong criticism from the national table of Together for Change, which, with the signature of the headlines of its parties, issued a statement in which it questioned that the State could geolocate people "always" through the GPS of cell phones and the lack of supervision that this tool of social control has.

"The Government will know the geographical location of each user at all times , their health data (provided by each user) and is authorized to share some data with social networks, such as Facebook, among other authorizations," said Alfredo Cornejo (UCR) , Patricia Bullrich (PRO) and Maximiliano Ferraro (Civic Coalition).

In addition, within the Government they recognize that there was a social reaction that they did not expect against permanent monitoring, since many people came out to express themselves on social networks against the Government for this application, which President Alberto Fernández said was mandatory for those who They begin to circulate to go to work in the middle of the quarantine for the coronavirus.

Cafiero, on the other hand, maintained that its use was optional. But he stressed on social networks the importance of using the CuidAR application, since "if anyone has symptoms of Covid-19, the app automatically blocks the circulation permit."

Within the Government there is strong criticism for its implementation, especially regarding the permanent tracking of citizens . "It was a mistake for the application to ask if the user wants us to 'always' know their location," a government official told Clarín . And he added: “But we are not geolocalizing at all times. We only do it when the user sends the results of the coronavirus self-test, to refer that information to the Emergency Committees of each province ”.

Javier Pallero, director of Access Now questioned "the obligation to install software on the computer" and that "there is a lack of clarity" regarding whether it is also mandatory to link the application with circulation permits, since on Monday there were police officers who they asked people for the app, to check if they could circulate. 

Among the changes that the Government promoted, after the controversies that were generated with this application, the fastest was in the password of the users, since during the weekend the security token was exposed by computer specialists.

Gonzalo Stupenengo, political director of Democracy Earth, told Clarín that the developers of the official app “were so careless that they not only published this private key in the code, but also used the one that appears in the tutorial to do this ; that is, doubly irresponsible ”.

"We already solved that and users are going to have updates during this week," said official sources.

What there is still no decision made in the Government is regarding whether the data collected by the CuidAR app should continue to be stored by the private company Amazon, on servers located in the United States, as is the case up to now, or if personal data of health of Argentine citizens should be in a state data center and within the country.

"We hired Amazon because this application had to be resolved in a very short time," said an official source. "But we are analyzing if at any time we can transfer these data within the country and have it done by a state company or official body," he added.

In addition, the government plans to launch a "help desk" in the coming days , so that people can ask questions about the app, as well as "express their doubts and concerns," an official source told Clarín .

It remains to be seen whether the government's harshest wing agrees to limit the social control allowed by this official app, which in its current version has few international antecedents, or if it continues to advance in the handling of personal data in an unprecedented way in Argentina. .