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Content type: Examples
India's COVID-19 tracker app, Aarogya Setu, was downloaded 50 million times in the first 13 days it was available. Developed by the National Informatics Centre a subsidiary of the Ministry of Electronics and IT, the app is available on both Android and iOS smartphones, and uses GPS and Bluetooth to provide information on whether the phone has been near an infected person. Users provide a mobile number, health status, and other credentials, and must keep both location services and Bluetooth…
Content type: Examples
The State Disaster Management Authority of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, in collaboration with other government agencies, is developing tools to track the travel history of people who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus and those who are under quarantine at home. The COVID alerting tracking system alerts the authorities if any of the more than 25,000 people who have been placed under home quarantine moves more than 100 metres from their base location. The system tracks their…
Content type: Examples
The Indian medical AI start-up Qure.ai has released qScout, an AI-powered "virtual care platform". Intended to help governments, hospitals, and clinics, the qScout app is meant to identify high-risk individuals, assist with contact tracing, facilitate remote triage, read chest X-rays to identify possible infections, use geomapping to estimate population risk, and use real time data to allocate critical resources. The company claims the app is also capable of reading chest x-rays to detect…
Content type: Examples
The computer science department at IIT-Bombay has sent two proposals for mobile applications that can track quarantine violators to a variety of Indian public authorities including officials in the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, the Maharashtra state government, and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. The first, Corentine, is intended to geofence suspects and asymptomatic carriers, and Safe, which was previously used by IIT-Bombay students to register classroom attendance,…
Content type: Examples
On the second day of India's nationwide shutdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Karnataka government published the home addresses of quarantined residents, as a deterrent to breaking the rules. The list included individuals who had flown in from a foreign country and been asked to stay indoors for two weeks but who had not tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Although the government deleted a tweet announcing its intention, the list is still available on its website and is circulating…
Content type: Examples
The former Big Brother reality TV star Matías Schrank was arrested by the Cybercrime division of the Misiones provincial police, after publishing tweets that claimed that Eduardo Rovira, the president of the Misiones legislature, had contracted COVID-19 on his recent trip to Thailand and was reckless in not immediately going into quarantine but continuing to hold meetings with other high-level government officials. Schrank was charged under Article. 211 of the Criminal Code, which…
Content type: Examples
The Argentinian company Urbetrack is developing a "Cuidate en casa" (Take Care of Yourself at Home) app that it will pitch to government agencies throughout the country. The goal is to contribute to remediating the health crisis by helping enforce quarantine. The plan is that users will download the app and complete a form with their personal details as chosen by the local authority. The app will then generate a "radial geofence" defined by the local authority, within which the user must stay.…
Content type: Examples
The Argentinian Ministry of Transport, working with the state-owned satellite company ARSAT and the telecoms regulator,ENACOM, proposed to the Executive on 31 March 2020 a platform that uses cell tower data to track people on public transport and ensure they comply with quarantine laws. By 28 March, the Ministry of Security had detained 13,006 people for violating the rules. The government believes that although compliance is high, it will deteriorate if quarantine is extended much longer…
Content type: Examples
The San Francisco-based big data company Grandata has created a heat map to show which areas of Argentina are best complying with the quarantine lockdown. Grandata used an "anonymised" dataset collected from apps that provide third parties with geolocation information. The heat map shows if an individual has moved more than 100 meters from the place where they spend most of their time, apparently without taking into account the socio-economic contexts of different cities, where individuals…
Content type: Examples
Learning from countries like South Korea, government of the Indian state Karnataka has assigned its ten-member COVID-19 task force, which includes IAS officers with expertise in the fields of technology, medicine and healthcare, to develop a system to the approximately 40,000 people who visited foreign countries during the period of the Covid-19 outbreak as well as those who have tested positive and their contacts. The Corona Watch app, which gives details of the places visited by the 56 people…
Content type: Examples
The Mumbai police have been asked by the civic governing body to track the movements of people arriving at Mumbai airport through the GPS location of their phones. Arrivals at the airport in Mumbai are also being stamped with “Proud to protect Mumbaikars. Home quarantined” with the date until which they have to remain in home isolation.
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/coronavirus-mumbai-civic-body-turns-to-phone-gps-to-enforce-home-quarantine-rules-6321098/
Writer:…
Content type: Examples
Argentina's Public Prosecutor's Office will start installing an app on the smartphones of those who violate government-ordered quarantine in the cities of Santa Fé and Rosario. The app will be installed by the province's Criminal Investigation Agency to track those who are under criminal investigation for violating quarantine. The app will send reports to the the MPA investigation office and coordinated by the Attorney General's Office. Individuals will be required to sign a document…
Content type: Examples
On March 23, Argentina's immigration agency, Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM), announced that anyone arriving in the country would be required to install the free COVID-19 Ministry of Health app on their phone for 14 days to ensure they comply with quarantine rules in order to protect the population. The Office of the Chief of Staff had instructed the DNM to adopt this policy when it launched the app, also on March 23. Since launch, the number of unnecessary permissions the app requests…
Content type: Examples
The self-testing web app issued by Argentina's Secretariat of Public Innovation asks for national ID number, email and phone as mandatory fields in order to submit the test. The Android version requires numerous permissions: calendar, contacts, geolocation data (both network-based and GPS), microphone, camera, full network access; change audio settings, run at startup; draw over other apps, prevent device from sleeping.
Sources:
https://www.argentina.gob.ar/coronavirus/app
https://play.…
Content type: Examples
The free app Testeate, developed by the company Adrómeda in collaboration with the Association of Information and Communication Technologies of Mar del Plata (ATICMA) and the Chamber of Software and Computer Services Companies of Argentina (CESSI) and launched in the Municipality of General Pueyrredón on March 26, is intended to enable direct information exchange between Argentina's National Ministry of Health and the population by offering constantly updated information in any city and…
Content type: Case Study
Having a right to a nationality isn’t predicated on giving up your right to privacy - and allowing whichever government runs that country to have as much information as they want. It is about having a fundamental right to government protection.
For the first time since 1951, Assam - a state in the north east of India - has been updating its national register of citizens (NRC), a list of everyone in Assam that the government considers to be an Indian citizen. The final version, published in…
Content type: Examples
India has begun stamping the hands of people arriving at airports in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka to specify the date until which they must remain in quarantine. The government is also using airline and railway reservation data to track suspected infections and find hand-stamped people who had promised not to travel. Kerala authorities have used telephone call records, CCTV footage, and mobile phone GPS systems to trace contracts of COVID-19 patients, and published detailed time and…
Content type: Examples
A group of independent developers in Argentina started CoTrack, a public crowdsourced effort to develop an app to track and slow the spread of the virus. CoTrack registers each user's geographic movements and looks for times when they are close to people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19. When there is a confirmed case, a user who has the app can share their data with the community so others can automatically be notified that they should take precautions. The Ministry of Health for the area…
Content type: Examples
An Argentinian crowdsourcing website is collecting information on flights with passengers who were reported as testing positive for COVID-19. Users are asked to enter their email address and the date, airline, and flight number, and tick a box to indicate that someone on their flight was infected. No information is provided on who operates the site, but the terms and conditions indicate that it uses open data flows alongside the collected data.
Source: http://www.checkmyvirusrisk.com/CO/…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was written by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, who are policy officers at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The piece was originally published on the website Economic Policy Weekly India here.
In order to bring out certain conceptual and procedural problems with health monitoring in the Indian context, this article posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.” Casting a critical feminist lens, the historicity of surveillance practices…
Content type: Case Study
Photo by Roger H. Goun
Chloe is an investigative journalist working for an international broadcast service; we will call the TV show she works for The Inquirer. She travels around the world to work with local journalists on uncovering stories that make the headlines: from human trafficking to drug cartels and government corruption. While her documentaries are watched by many and inspire change in the countries she works in, you would not know who Chloe is if we were to tell you her real name.…
Content type: Examples
Cases of people being denied healthcare as they fail to provide an Aadhaar number have already started emerging. A 28-year old domestic worker, for instance, had to be hospitalised for a blood transfusion after she had an abortion with an unqualified local physician. She had been denied an abortion, to which she was legally entitled, from a reputable government hospital, as she did not have an Aadhaar card. Following this case, 52 public health organisations and individuals issued a statement…
Content type: Examples
While not currently mandatory to access healthcare services, Aadhaar is however increasingly used in the health sector as well. In 2018, the health ministry had to issue a statement to clarify that Aadhaar was “desirable” but not a must to access a 5 rupee insurance cover for hospitalisation under the Ayushman Bharat scheme.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/aadhaar-desirable-not-must-for-rs-5-lakh-healthcare-scheme-says-centre/story-mvQwqSKzDFYE0rhxqLFbLO.html
Author: Rhythma Kaul…
Content type: Examples
In India, one of the reasons the Aadhaar ID system has been increasingly widely used is that it is mandatory for much India’s benefits system. Government subsidies are now processed through under the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, which requires citizens to have a bank account and to insure that their Aadhaar number is linked to their bank account so they can receive subsidies.
https://www.paisabazaar.com/aadhar-card/want-to-avail-government-subsidies-provide-aadhaar-and-get-it-easily/…
Content type: Examples
In December 2018 reports emerged that the Indian Electoral Commission would propose amendments to the Representation of the People Act 1951 that would require citizens to link their Electoral Photo ID Card to their Aadhaar number with the stated goal of improving the accuracy of the electoral rolls. The legal change was needed because two months earlier the Indian Supreme Court had ruled that Aadhaar could only be made mandatory for welfare schemes, Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards, and…
Content type: Examples
In January 2019, Facebook announced it would extend some of the rules and transparency tools it developed for political advertising for upcoming spring elections in Nigeria, Ukraine, India, and the EU. In Nigeria, the site will bar electoral ads from advertisers outside the country where the election is being held, build a searchable library of electoral ads and retaining them for seven years, check the identity of individuals buying political ads against government-issued documents, and…
Content type: Examples
As part of the digital campaign to win re-election, in mid-2018 the BJP, which controls the Indian national government as well as that of the state of Chhattisbarh, handed out $71 million worth of free phones and subsidised data plans to 2.9 million of the state's voters and then used the phones to target prospective voters. The plan's stated purpose was to bridge the digital divide in the state, which has a population of 26 million; hundreds of cellphone towers are supposed to be added to…
Content type: State of Privacy
Table of contents
Introduction
Right to Privacy
Communication Surveillance
Data Protection
Identification Schemes
Policies and Sectoral Initiatives
Introduction
Acknowledgement
The State of Privacy in India is the result of an ongoing collaboration by Privacy International and the Centre for Internet & Society.
Key Privacy Facts
1. Constitutional privacy protections: In 2017, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the Indian constitution guarantees a right to privacy.
2. Data…
Content type: State of Privacy
Table of contents
Introduction
Right to Privacy
Communication Surveillance
Data Protection
Identification Schemes
Policies and Sectoral Initiatives
Introduction
Acknowledgement
The State of Privacy in Argentina is the result of an ongoing collaboration by Privacy International and Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC).
Key Privacy Facts
1. Constitutional privacy protections: While Argentina's constitution does not mention the word 'privacy', Section 19 has been taken by the…
Content type: Examples
In March 2018, Indian Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted that the Naramendra Modi app issued by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was leaking user data. The app is intended to spearhead BJP's social media strategy in the run-up to the 2019 general elections; the party hopes to use it to mobilise 100 million BJP members and has set a target of 100,000 downloads for each district. Both privacy activists and political rivals complained that the app asks for too many permissions, is…