[kumarvvr]

You know that the app can be removed at any instant, once the lockdown is over?

Contact tracing in India, which has one of the lowest Police / People ratios in the world, is extremely difficult. There are a billion+ people and simply not enough personnel to do any contact tracing.

Sections of the society are hostile towards medical and police personnel.

What alternative do you suggest? One that can be implemented immediately.

> The mobile number part concerns me. Government wants to use it as a way to contact people but the potential for abuse is there

What abuse are you talking about?

> Installing this app is mandatory for public and private companies. So if you are an employee, you have no choice in the matter. It's like a surveillance state in the making.

These are the ones who are travelling. What better method is there to execute contact tracing?

> They are also planning an e pass feature which will be required to board a flight/metro. Chinese level dystopian shit in the works.

The virus is in India due to international travelers. You would want to know where an international traveler has been during his travel. Once someone is out of India, the govt. can't do anything.

> Random cops stopping to ensure you have the app installed? Happening. Non complaince? Do situps, get beaten with a lathi. I wish I was joking.

If you are roaming out when there is a lockdown, the cops ought to check the app. The app is meant for contact tracing. About getting beaten or made to do situps, in my view, a far lesser punishment rather than charging and going the legal route. Than would be draconian.

Also, this requirement for app installation is because the lockdown is being considerably relaxed in majority of the country.

I would agree about privacy issues if the govt. asks citizens to use it even after this pandemic is done. In that case, I myself will go to the streets to fight.

But, in the current situation, this is absolutely required and the only cost-effective, efficient way for contact tracing in a country like India.

[whoisthis12]

> If you are roaming out when there is a lockdown, the cops ought to check the app. The app is meant for contact tracing. About getting beaten or made to do situps, in my view, a far lesser punishment rather than charging and going the legal route. Than would be draconian.

Was watching the news channel yesterday. Some guy had spit on the road. The police made him take off his shirt, and wipe it on the road thoroughly. If this wasn't enough, they made him do squats, while holding his ears, in the middle of the road in everyone's view. At some point, it turned from a punishment to simply humiliating someone just because you have that power.

> I would agree about privacy issues if the govt. asks citizens to use it even after this pandemic is done. In that case, I myself will go to the streets to fight.

This is just a guess of mine since I don't think we have seen any new devices coming with this app pre-installed, cause who's buying phones now. The app won't be easy to uninstall, and even if you can uninstall with adb or disable, how many people do you think will do that?

Even if the app is easy to uninstall, most people will forget to uninstall until specifically asked to do so. I have seen so many Indians still content with the Cheetah bloatware that often comes pre-installed, oblivious to the fact that they are utterly useless.

> The mobile number part concerns me. Government wants to use it as a way to contact people but the potential for abuse is there

>What abuse are you talking about?

Do you remember the adhaar database leak? How much confidence do you have in our government's security measures?

[wtmt]

> Do you remember the adhaar database leak?

A minor nitpick. It’s “leaks”, not leak. There have been many over the years.

[GordonS]

I've read several quotes from the Indian government about Adhaar, and their attitude towards security stinks - they continually claimed that it's 100% secure and that leaks and abuses are impossible.

No system is 100% secure, and talking about it like that makes them look like clowns.

[pessimist]

> You know that the app can be removed at any instant, once the lockdown is over?

But the data is with the government already, and as per their terms of service can be stored forever, and for any purpose they wish (as long as its a "legal requirement").

"“The personal information collected will not be used for any purpose other than those mentioned in this Clause 2 save as required in order to comply with a legal requirement.”

"All personal information collected from you under Clause 1(a) provided at the time of registration will be retained for as long as your account remains in existence and for such period thereafter as required for the purposes for which the information may lawfully be used or is otherwise required under any other law for the time being in force"

https://www.medianama.com/wp-content/uploads/Aarogya-Setu-Pr...

The government has already changed the privacy policy without notification, and for sure they can change it again and nobody - especially not a compliant judiciary - will stop them.

[ashwinm]

They are government employee, not a usual citizen. What is the relevance of that data after the lockdown? (They will be coming to the office every day like before)

[kumarvvr]

Apart from historical location data, the govt already has much info about citizens. This app will not add anything new.

[denzil_correa]

Then, there’s no need for the app. The government can use the data which it “already has”.

[ajnin]

> You know that the app can be removed at any instant, once the lockdown is over?

Not according to this article : https://www.news18.com/news/tech/aarogya-setu-registration-w...

> According to officials with knowledge of the matter, the government of India is making it mandatory for all new smartphones to be sold in India post lifting of the lockdown to not just have the app as a pre-installed service, but also ensure that individuals register on it and set it up, before beginning to use their new smartphones. [...] This will make the Aarogya Setu app an inbuilt feature on all new smartphones, that will be sold in India going forward.

[gvjddbnvdrbv]

> Sections of the society are hostile towards medical and police personnel.

> About getting beaten or made to do situps, in my view, a far lesser punishment rather than charging and going the legal route. Than would be draconian.

I wonder why they are hostile? Could it maybe be because their civil liberties get massively infringed on a regular basis?

[gen_greyface]

> their civil liberties get massively infringed on a regular basis?

^This in addition with rumors spread among these sections,

[kumarvvr]

There is a fear that medical personnel might spread the disease.

Yeah, police force is a complex beast in India. Just like anywhere in the world.

Regarding civil liberties, can you specify why you have come to such a conclusion?

There are countless instances where police have infringed civil liberties, as well as countless instances where the police were ineffective.

[scarmig]

> There are a billion+ people

> simply not enough personnel to do any contact tracing.

Those seem a bit contradictory, no? China also has over a billion people and managed to find the labor to perform contact tracing.

[toomanybeersies]

China is already a surveillance state though, so it's not really a good example.

[ateevchopra]

China has made QR readers checkpoints across city to track people's each and every movement.

[scarmig]

When the pandemic started, they hired thousands of people to do the old-fashioned, labor intensive version of contact tracing. Technology and preexisting state powers certainly played a part, but the manual contact tracing is very transferrable everywhere.

[quantummkv]

China is already a police that tracks every bit of data on their part of the internet. They don't need manual labor or new apps for contact tracing because they already had the infrastructure built.

[searchableguy]

But why are they using this instead of any other protocol or spec released by anyone else that offers more privacy than this crap.

[bhargav]

Are those protocols available for potentially any cell phone in the world and devices that could be years old?

For examples has Nokia releases a protocol?

[searchableguy]

You know the current procotol that setu app uses is way more battery consuming than apple-google's bluetooth only approach.

I wonder how those poor old phones will survive with it.

(I don't wish to engage more because I don't think you are looking for a good faith argument here because android app released by the government won't work on those Nokias and I don't see why you can't have two different appS with different level of efficiency because you will need two different apps regardless?)

[jlokier]

Yes, those protocols would be available to any cell phone in the world and old devices to the same extent as any other legally-mandated protocol would be.

For example, if government can order than Nokia release a privacy-harming contract-tracing feature, then the government can instead order that Nokia release a privacy-enhanced version based on the Google-Apple protocols instead (or any other better protocols people have developed).

It would be more effective for the pandemic too, because you want maximum interoperability.

And it would be more effective for the pandemic because you will get better compliance too. If people know they are 100% tracked with full transparency they are more motivated to find ways to cheat, especially when doing something "disapproved" (like seeing your secret lover), which is not good for countering the pandemic. People will definitely find ways to cheat the tracing if they are motivated.

[quantummkv]

The exact reason why there are lockdowns the world over instead of everyone doing nothing while waiting for a vaccine. Or why the human history is filled with flawed and working solutions for everything instead of perfect and imaginary solutions.

There might be better protocols or specs available. But no one other that a doomsday cultist can afford the bodies to start piling up while doing nothing instead of doing something.

[sbmthakur]

Why exactly it is "crap"? And which other protocol would be better than this?

[eqtn]

Govt hasn't mentioned anywhere that this is temporary. If it is just for contact tracing they could have atleast mentioned it in terms and conditions

[mardifoufs]

Why is contact tracing even relevant at this point? Especially for india? The data we have on the virus shows that a lot of people are asymptomatic, we also have some serotyping testing data possibly indicating much higher infection numbers than previously thought.

That wouldn't be much of a problem if the outbreak would've just started now (which is the reason contact tracing made sense for South Korea) but why would India, with it's huge population and probably similar real spread timeline benefit from it at this point? To me most of the world missed the small window of time when contact tracing makes sense and it is now a complete red herring.

By the way, why would you assume they would pull out the app after the lockdown? I mean, you could always argue that it will still be needed to make sure there's no second, or third outbreak. And then needed to make sure everyone got the vaccine (everyone should absolutely get the vaccine when it eventually comes out, my point here is that there will always be more reasons to extend the usage of surveillance tools like this), and then maybe keep the app to prevent future outbreaks. Where do you eventually draw the line? Who decides when the pandemic is over especially considering how likely it is that it will become a seasonal disease? There is literally no incentive for governments to eventually stop.

They don't even need to have malicious intentions, it can be to avoid a future outbreak of a new disease that is this severe. But that's the whole point, there's always a seemingly good reason to increase surveillance and the excuse is often that there is no alternative. Which may be true, but all governments, even the most dictatorial ones, don't directly say that they are taking your rights for no reason. It's always because of foreign spies, to fight terrorism, to protect the nation or the most often used excuse: to keep people safe.

[searchableguy]

https://twitter.com/pokershash/status/1251452345994510336?s=...

Check at 50 secs. There is police commissioner there. And the guys still got killed over bunch of rumours.

Don't believe that the government or law enforcement is there to protect you.

[martimarkov]

> What alternative do you suggest? One that can be implemented immediately.

Let's say the same one but put some privacy in place. Let's have full transparency about how the information is used. Maybe put a more privacy friendly law in place like GDPR. Something that keeps the govn in check.

Or another alternative: Use the Apple-Google approach and their APIs.

> What abuse are you talking about? With a first name and last name direct identification is a bit hard. With a unique number that is tied directly to an individual like the phone number... IDK... What can you do when you know exactly where everyone SPECIFICALLY has been or is right now. Maybe know that who lives with who? Maybe be able to deduce when ppl are cheating? Maybe be able to use this location data for extortion?

[mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE]

for burglary - detecting when no one is at home; for rape - detecting when a girl is alone or in a secluded location; for blackmail - detecting who sleeps with whom; for stealing trade secrets - detecting clients/suppliers a businessmen meets with; for insider trading; for contract killings; .......................

[alal10]

> What alternative do you suggest? One that can be implemented immediately.

Make India a British colony again as of today? Seriously, do you think Gandhi would approve of this app?