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<p><em><strong>Aarogya Setu</strong></em></p><p>In his April 14 address that announced the extension of the coronavirus lockdown till May 3, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to Indians to follow a seven-pronged strategy to combat the pandemic. One of the measures was to download the Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app. The app, conceived by NITI Aayog, has been developed in two weeks by the National Informatics Centre in collaboration with the developers of makemytrip.com and 1mg.com.</p><p>Aarogya Setu is designed on the premise that if two mobile phones are within Bluetooth range of each other, their users are potentially close enough to transmit the novel coronavirus to one another. Since its launch on April 2, the app, which is available in 11 Indian languages, has registered nearly 50 million downloads. A World Bank report released on April 12 says innovative solutions like the Aarogya Setu could greatly help track contagious diseases while a University of Oxford study considers digital contact-tracing as effective, provided there is widespread adoption.</p><p>Despite such praise, Aarogya Setu has attracted criticism over privacy issues as it seeks users&rsquo; personal information, such as name, age, sex, profession and countries visited in the past 30 days. Every 15 minutes, it collects data about the user&rsquo;s location and the places the user visits. According to the app&rsquo;s terms of service, personal information and location data are securely stored on the mobile device. The information is uploaded to a central server only when a user tests positive for COVID-19 or a self-assessment of symptoms indicates the possibility of infection.</p><div class="itemcenter"><amp-iframe height="62" title="" width="320" sandbox="allow-forms allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" allowfullscreen src="https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.dev?url=https%3A%2F%2Fakm-img-a-in.tosshub.com%2Fsites%2Findiatoday%2Fbanner%2Fpreferred-source-new.html%3Fv%3D1.014%5Cu0026native%3D1" class="mrBt15 preferred-source-banner"> </amp-iframe></div></p><p>While uploading to the server, the information is hashed with a unique, randomly generated device ID (DiD) number, which is used to identify the user in all subsequent app-related activities. &ldquo;The DiD is reconnected to the personal information only when the user&rsquo;s risk of infection is so high that the government needs to tell the person to get tested,&rdquo; says Rahul Matthan, a cyber-law expert consulted by the Union government during the development of the app.</p><p>When two registered users come within each other&rsquo;s Bluetooth range, their apps automatically exchange DiDs and information about where the contact happened and for what duration. Every phone builds a log of every other phone in its close proximity, thereby creating a social chain of people a user has come in contact with. If such a user tests positive for COVID-19, the system alerts all those who came in close proximity of the person. Such users are advised to quarantine themselves and, should they develop symptoms, get tested. Like Aarogya Setu user Aarti Singh (name changed) from Delhi, who received an alert when a buyer at a grocery store she had been to tested positive. &ldquo;The app sent me an alert because it had recorded my location,&rdquo; says the 42-year-old architect. To Singh&rsquo;s relief, her RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) test turned out to be negative.</p><p>Cyber security experts claim contact-tracing apps in other countries, such as Singapore and Israel, are not so intrusive. Singapore&rsquo;s TraceTogether app requires only the user&rsquo;s mobile number. Data is transferred to a central server only after a COVID-positive user grants consent. The TraceTogether app doesn&rsquo;t collect location data either.</p><p>In its guidelines on using technology to combat COVID-19, the European Commission has advised against processing data on location or movement of individuals. Aarogya Setu asks for GPS location even though this has no role in contact-tracing. &ldquo;Location data will not be used for surveillance,&rdquo; says NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant. &ldquo;It is used only for hotspots or where more testing is required. The identity of a COVID-19 person will never be revealed to anyone.&rdquo;</p><p>The app&rsquo;s privacy policy states that the information is uploaded to a cloud server in anonymised and aggregated datasets only &ldquo;for the purpose of generating reports, heat maps and other statistical visualisations&rdquo;. Critics, however, argue that it is unclear as to what the government views as &lsquo;anonymised&rsquo;. In a detailed report on contact-tracing apps, New Delhi-based NGO Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has flagged the app&rsquo;s shortcomings in terms of data collection and storage, purpose limitation and transparency. The app&rsquo;s privacy policy states that information will be purged from the phone after 30 days and from the server after 45 days if the user does not test COVID-positive in that period. Information about users who test positive will be purged 60 days after they have been declared cured. However, personal data collected while registering with the app will be retained till the account exists and, thereafter, &ldquo;as long as required under any law in force for the time being&rdquo;. Nowhere in the policy, though, is the legal requirement for this defined.</p><p>&ldquo;Users have no way of checking if the government has deleted the data. They should have a judicial remedy to hold the government accountable,&rdquo; says Sidharth Deb, policy and parliamentary counsel at IFF. The other sore point is that the liability clause exempts the government in the event of unauthorised access and modification of a user&rsquo;s information. Kant allays such fears. &ldquo;The government will not use the data gathered by the app for any purpose other than COVID-19 medical examination,&rdquo; he asserts.</p><p>While the personal information collected cannot be disclosed or transferred to a third party, critics point out that since the privacy policy does not specify which government department owns the data, it remains a property of the Union government and is, arguably, open to use by all agencies, including the police. The other fear is that the government could significantly expand its surveillance powers by combining the app&rsquo;s data with existing government databases, many of which are seeded with mobile numbers.</p><p>Deb questions a clause that allows the government to share the personal data with &ldquo;other necessary and relevant persons&rdquo; for COVID-19 related &ldquo;medical and administrative interventions&rdquo;. &ldquo;Administrative functions can also mean that such information can be used towards, say, implementing lockdown and quarantine orders. This is against global best practices. For instance, the EU says that to comply with its General Data Protection Regulation, the data collected by contact-tracing solutions should be used only for healthcare-related responses to the crisis,&rdquo; he says.</p><p>Matthan argues that the health ministry cannot possibly work in isolation while combating COVID-19, and inter-departmental cooperation and sharing of information is critical.</p><p>India has an estimated 400 million or more smartphone users. If even half of them download Aarogya Setu, it could create a contact-tracing map of 200 million,15 per cent of the total population. &ldquo;In a unique crisis, the app may have a very legitimate objective, but it doesn&rsquo;t stand up to the test of proportionality,&rdquo; says Amber Sinha, executive director at the not-for-profit Centre for Internet & Society. &ldquo;Only data of COVID-19-infected users should be pulled to the cloud server.&rdquo;</p><p>For Matthan, this criticism does not hold water as the details of only those infected are uploaded to the server. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s assume 100,000 people will be infected in India. So, the data of only 100,000 people will be pulled out by the government for analysis and it will remain on the server for only 60 days. So that&rsquo;s the canvas of the app in a country with 1.3 billion people,&rdquo; he explains.</p><p>Deb says the fact that the app&rsquo;s code is not open source compromises transparency. &ldquo;The Singapore tracing app has a dedicated website, which details how the data is collected, stored, used and deleted. The source code is published for public scrutiny,&rdquo; he says. Aarogya Setu, in contrast, prohibits users from reverse-engineering the backend source code, which means independent researchers cannot ascertain the veracity of official claims that the app is doing this and not that.</p><p>Despite these concerns, the official line is that Aarogya Setu has enough built-in security features to perform its legitimate task without infringing upon the privacy of citizens. Privacy concerns can be dealt with by legislating sunset clauses on tracking systems,&rdquo; says the World Bank report. The next goal is to scale up Aarogya Setu by integrating it with feature phones through IVR support.</p><p><strong>How Aarogya Setu works</strong></p><div class="itgimage"><amp-img src="https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.dev?url=https%3A%2F%2Fakm-img-a-in.tosshub.com%2Findiatoday%2Fimages%2Fbodyeditor%2F202004%2FUpfront-1-3-Apr27-21-x675.jpg%3Fyyou4uKCWNSm.UcybkwJNrHfs1RZhFty%3Fsize%3D750:*" alt="" height="675" width="1200" class="" layout="responsive"></amp-img>
<div class="body_caption">Graphic by Tanmoy Chakraborty</div>
</div></p><p>The Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app is a key resource addition in India&rsquo;s fight against COVID-19, garnering nearly 50 million downloads in less than a fortnight besides praise in a World Bank report. Its design, however, has raised the hackles of privacy advocates and cybersecurity experts, who feel the app seeks too much personal information. They are not convinced by the official assertion that only data of COVID-positive users is uploaded to the central server, in anonymised form, and purged 60 days after such users have been declared cured.</p><div id="tab-link-wrapper-plugin"><div class="authors__container"><div class="authors__by"><div class="authlable">Published By: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Iram Ara Ibrahim</div></div><div class="published__on"><div class="authlable">Published On: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Apr 18, 2020</div></div></div><div class="sendros">--- ENDS ---</div></div>

guest-column

Guest Column

<p><em><strong>Aarogya Setu</strong></em></p><p>In his April 14 address that announced the extension of the coronavirus lockdown till May 3, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to Indians to follow a seven-pronged strategy to combat the pandemic. One of the measures was to download the Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app. The app, conceived by NITI Aayog, has been developed in two weeks by the National Informatics Centre in collaboration with the developers of makemytrip.com and 1mg.com.</p><p>Aarogya Setu is designed on the premise that if two mobile phones are within Bluetooth range of each other, their users are potentially close enough to transmit the novel coronavirus to one another. Since its launch on April 2, the app, which is available in 11 Indian languages, has registered nearly 50 million downloads. A World Bank report released on April 12 says innovative solutions like the Aarogya Setu could greatly help track contagious diseases while a University of Oxford study considers digital contact-tracing as effective, provided there is widespread adoption.</p><p>Despite such praise, Aarogya Setu has attracted criticism over privacy issues as it seeks users&rsquo; personal information, such as name, age, sex, profession and countries visited in the past 30 days. Every 15 minutes, it collects data about the user&rsquo;s location and the places the user visits. According to the app&rsquo;s terms of service, personal information and location data are securely stored on the mobile device. The information is uploaded to a central server only when a user tests positive for COVID-19 or a self-assessment of symptoms indicates the possibility of infection.</p><div class="itemcenter"><iframe scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="62" awidth="320" aheight="62" amplayout="fixed" src="https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.dev?url=https%3A%2F%2Fakm-img-a-in.tosshub.com%2Fsites%2Findiatoday%2Fbanner%2Fpreferred-source-new.html%3Fv%3D1.014" class="preferred-source-banner" loading="lazy"></iframe></div><style>.preferred-source-banner{  margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}</style></p><p>While uploading to the server, the information is hashed with a unique, randomly generated device ID (DiD) number, which is used to identify the user in all subsequent app-related activities. &ldquo;The DiD is reconnected to the personal information only when the user&rsquo;s risk of infection is so high that the government needs to tell the person to get tested,&rdquo; says Rahul Matthan, a cyber-law expert consulted by the Union government during the development of the app.</p><p>When two registered users come within each other&rsquo;s Bluetooth range, their apps automatically exchange DiDs and information about where the contact happened and for what duration. Every phone builds a log of every other phone in its close proximity, thereby creating a social chain of people a user has come in contact with. If such a user tests positive for COVID-19, the system alerts all those who came in close proximity of the person. Such users are advised to quarantine themselves and, should they develop symptoms, get tested. Like Aarogya Setu user Aarti Singh (name changed) from Delhi, who received an alert when a buyer at a grocery store she had been to tested positive. &ldquo;The app sent me an alert because it had recorded my location,&rdquo; says the 42-year-old architect. To Singh&rsquo;s relief, her RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) test turned out to be negative.</p><p>Cyber security experts claim contact-tracing apps in other countries, such as Singapore and Israel, are not so intrusive. Singapore&rsquo;s TraceTogether app requires only the user&rsquo;s mobile number. Data is transferred to a central server only after a COVID-positive user grants consent. The TraceTogether app doesn&rsquo;t collect location data either.</p><p>In its guidelines on using technology to combat COVID-19, the European Commission has advised against processing data on location or movement of individuals. Aarogya Setu asks for GPS location even though this has no role in contact-tracing. &ldquo;Location data will not be used for surveillance,&rdquo; says NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant. &ldquo;It is used only for hotspots or where more testing is required. The identity of a COVID-19 person will never be revealed to anyone.&rdquo;</p><p>The app&rsquo;s privacy policy states that the information is uploaded to a cloud server in anonymised and aggregated datasets only &ldquo;for the purpose of generating reports, heat maps and other statistical visualisations&rdquo;. Critics, however, argue that it is unclear as to what the government views as &lsquo;anonymised&rsquo;. In a detailed report on contact-tracing apps, New Delhi-based NGO Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has flagged the app&rsquo;s shortcomings in terms of data collection and storage, purpose limitation and transparency. The app&rsquo;s privacy policy states that information will be purged from the phone after 30 days and from the server after 45 days if the user does not test COVID-positive in that period. Information about users who test positive will be purged 60 days after they have been declared cured. However, personal data collected while registering with the app will be retained till the account exists and, thereafter, &ldquo;as long as required under any law in force for the time being&rdquo;. Nowhere in the policy, though, is the legal requirement for this defined.</p><p>&ldquo;Users have no way of checking if the government has deleted the data. They should have a judicial remedy to hold the government accountable,&rdquo; says Sidharth Deb, policy and parliamentary counsel at IFF. The other sore point is that the liability clause exempts the government in the event of unauthorised access and modification of a user&rsquo;s information. Kant allays such fears. &ldquo;The government will not use the data gathered by the app for any purpose other than COVID-19 medical examination,&rdquo; he asserts.</p><p>While the personal information collected cannot be disclosed or transferred to a third party, critics point out that since the privacy policy does not specify which government department owns the data, it remains a property of the Union government and is, arguably, open to use by all agencies, including the police. The other fear is that the government could significantly expand its surveillance powers by combining the app&rsquo;s data with existing government databases, many of which are seeded with mobile numbers.</p><p>Deb questions a clause that allows the government to share the personal data with &ldquo;other necessary and relevant persons&rdquo; for COVID-19 related &ldquo;medical and administrative interventions&rdquo;. &ldquo;Administrative functions can also mean that such information can be used towards, say, implementing lockdown and quarantine orders. This is against global best practices. For instance, the EU says that to comply with its General Data Protection Regulation, the data collected by contact-tracing solutions should be used only for healthcare-related responses to the crisis,&rdquo; he says.</p><p>Matthan argues that the health ministry cannot possibly work in isolation while combating COVID-19, and inter-departmental cooperation and sharing of information is critical.</p><p>India has an estimated 400 million or more smartphone users. If even half of them download Aarogya Setu, it could create a contact-tracing map of 200 million,15 per cent of the total population. &ldquo;In a unique crisis, the app may have a very legitimate objective, but it doesn&rsquo;t stand up to the test of proportionality,&rdquo; says Amber Sinha, executive director at the not-for-profit Centre for Internet & Society. &ldquo;Only data of COVID-19-infected users should be pulled to the cloud server.&rdquo;</p><p>For Matthan, this criticism does not hold water as the details of only those infected are uploaded to the server. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s assume 100,000 people will be infected in India. So, the data of only 100,000 people will be pulled out by the government for analysis and it will remain on the server for only 60 days. So that&rsquo;s the canvas of the app in a country with 1.3 billion people,&rdquo; he explains.</p><p>Deb says the fact that the app&rsquo;s code is not open source compromises transparency. &ldquo;The Singapore tracing app has a dedicated website, which details how the data is collected, stored, used and deleted. The source code is published for public scrutiny,&rdquo; he says. Aarogya Setu, in contrast, prohibits users from reverse-engineering the backend source code, which means independent researchers cannot ascertain the veracity of official claims that the app is doing this and not that.</p><p>Despite these concerns, the official line is that Aarogya Setu has enough built-in security features to perform its legitimate task without infringing upon the privacy of citizens. Privacy concerns can be dealt with by legislating sunset clauses on tracking systems,&rdquo; says the World Bank report. The next goal is to scale up Aarogya Setu by integrating it with feature phones through IVR support.</p><p><strong>How Aarogya Setu works</strong></p><div class="itgimage"><div class="itgimage"><img  height="675"  title=""  width="1200"  class="" alt="" src="https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.dev?url=https%3A%2F%2Fakm-img-a-in.tosshub.com%2Findiatoday%2Fimages%2Fbodyeditor%2F202004%2FUpfront-1-3-Apr27-21-x675.jpg%3Fyyou4uKCWNSm.UcybkwJNrHfs1RZhFty%3Fsize%3D750:*" loading="lazy" /></div>
<div class="body_caption">Graphic by Tanmoy Chakraborty</div>
</div></p><p>The Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app is a key resource addition in India&rsquo;s fight against COVID-19, garnering nearly 50 million downloads in less than a fortnight besides praise in a World Bank report. Its design, however, has raised the hackles of privacy advocates and cybersecurity experts, who feel the app seeks too much personal information. They are not convinced by the official assertion that only data of COVID-positive users is uploaded to the central server, in anonymised form, and purged 60 days after such users have been declared cured.</p><div id="tab-link-wrapper-plugin"><div class="authors__container"><div class="authors__by"><div class="authlable">Published By: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Iram Ara Ibrahim</div></div><div class="published__on"><div class="authlable">Published On: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Apr 18, 2020</div></div></div><div class="sendros">--- ENDS ---</div></div>

The app, conceived by NITI Aayog, has been developed in two weeks by the National Informatics Centre in collaboration with the developers of makemytrip.com and 1mg.com.

India Today

The long arm of an app - India Today

The long arm of an app

The move formally revives negotiations between India and the six-nation bloc after a long gap and signals a renewed push to deepen economic cooperation.

trade deal

India, Gulf Cooperation Council agree to restart talks on long-pending free trade deal

Over 100 boxes of gelatin sticks and more than 20 boxes of detonators were found concealed under a consignment of watermelons in a vehicle in Kerala's Palakkad.

The gelatin sticks and explosives were seized from Palakkad.

Over 100 boxes of explosives, hidden under watermelons on truck, seized in Kerala

India’s school education system is shifting, with over 18,700 government schools closing in five years while private schools continue to grow. This trend raises concerns about affordability, rural access, and education equity, signalling major changes in the country’s public education structure.

Delhi school holidays extended as cold wave and pollution persist

India lost 18,727 government schools in 5 years, while private schools rose in just one year

18,727 government schools closed in India in 5 years, private schools rise

Data centres are the backbone of the modern digital world, supporting popular technological advances. But what is the need to launch them into orbit?

AI is thirsty: more data centres are consuming water, worsening water scarcity

Elon Musk wants data centres in space: What are they and what do they do?

Musk wants data centres in space: What are they and what do they do?

Bharat Taxi has officially been launched in India. The app, backed by the Government of India, promises transparent fares, and better pay for drivers compared to private cab aggregators, such as Uber and Ola.

bharat-taxi-050546134-16x9.png

Bharat Taxi officially launched in India: How it is different from Ola, Uber

Play Time!

Parliament Budget Session

PM Modi

Bharat Taxi

Donald Trump

Mamata Banerjee

IND vs AFG LIVE Score

Rahul Gandhi

WPL 2026

Dhurandhar 2

T20 World Cup

Border 2

Here's the drone visuals of the massive traffic jam on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which has hit vehicular movement for over 24 hours after a gas tanker overturned in the hilly Khandala Ghat section.

drone

Watch: Drone visuals of massive 22-km traffic jam on Mumbai-Pune Expressway

Addressing the Lok Sabha, Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said the government has successfully safeguarded sensitive sectors in US trade deal.  

Piyush Goyal: No Compromise On Farmers Interests In US Deal

India protected agriculture, dairy interests in US trade deal: Piyush Goyal

In this Special Report, India Today’s Mir Fareed provides exclusive details on a major counter-terror operation in Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur. Security forces, including the Army, Jammu Kashmir Police, and CRPF, successfully eliminated two Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who were hiding in a natural cave within a dense forested terrain. Mir Fareed noted, ‘Finally, their luck ran out as security forces used IEDs to blow up the entrance. And with that, they were eliminated.’ One of the deceased has been identified as a top commander, Abu Mavia. The operation involved sophisticated drone surveillance and sharpshooters to pin down the terrorists who had previously evaded capture. The report highlights the evolving tactics of security agencies in tackling infiltrators using the treacherous forest reaches of Jammu. The area is currently being sanitised as per standard operating procedures following the recovery of weapons.

Mir Fareed: Two Jaish Terrorists Killed In Udhampur Cave

2 Jaish terrorists killed as security forces blow up cave in Jammu and Kashmir

This news report covers the intense political confrontation in Parliament where Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi reportedly called BJP leader Ravneet Singh Bittu a 'traitor'. The incident occurred near the Makar Dwar as suspended MPs were protesting. The transcript highlights that Bittu, once a close associate of Gandhi, was heckled by Congress members following the remark. Additionally, the bulletin features a statement regarding the suspension of eight Congress MPs for the remainder of the session due to 'unruly behaviour'. Dilip Saikia, who was in the chair during the ruckus, stated that the members violated parliamentary decorum and rules. The report notes that the Congress party views those who defect to the other side through a specific 'prism', leading to the sharp exchange. The drama unfolded as Priyanka Gandhi also met with the suspended legislators to discuss the adjournment of the House.

Rahul Gandhi Calls Bittu a Traitor in Parliament

Rahul Gandhi Calls Ravneet Singh Bittu a 'Traitor' outside Parliament

On this Special Report, the focus is on a tragic incident in Ghaziabad where three minor sisters, aged 12, 14, and 16, allegedly died by suicide by jumping from the ninth floor of a high-rise building. ACP Atul Kumar stated, 'Three girls jumped from the balcony of the ninth floor of flat number 907 in Bharat City and were declared dead upon arrival at the hospital.' A suicide note recovered from the scene read, 'Mummy Papa, we are sorry.' Police have seized mobile phones and gadgets for forensic examination to determine if specific gaming tasks triggered the extreme step. The incident occurred around 2:30 AM, and authorities are recording statements from family and neighbors to uncover the exact cause behind this triple suicide horror.

Atul Kumar: 3 Sisters Jump To Death In Ghaziabad

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The long arm of an app

The app, conceived by NITI Aayog, has been developed in two weeks by the National Informatics Centre in collaboration with the developers of makemytrip.com and 1mg.com.

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