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Article

11 Apr 2020

Author:
Kamala Thiagarajan, NPR

India: Surveillance apps launched to curb spread of virus exposes country's lack of digital privacy laws

"An Indian State Tells Quarantined Folks: 'A Selfie An Hour Will Keep The Police Away'", 12 April 2020

It's a new mobile app called Quarantine Watch. The government of the southern Indian state of Karnataka is using it to track people it has placed under home quarantine. To see whether people stay put, the app follows users' movements through GPS — and asks them to submit hourly selfies to prove they haven't left the house...

Quarantine Watch is just one of several apps and other digital surveillance measures that states and the central government have launched to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. While many Indians have not objected to these measures, human rights activists and lawyers like Murali Neelakantan say the new efforts are highly intrusive, putting people suspected of COVID-19 at risk of stigma and harassment and exposing the country's lack of digital privacy laws.

...And then there are concerns raised by the growing number of surveillance apps, like Quarantine Watch, which collects the hourly selfies, and another app called "Arogya Setu" (roughly translated as the Bridge to Health) created by the central government. Many of the apps collect personal information, track movement by looking at GPS and have data about the users' coronavirus status.

Currently, the government can use the India's National Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 to do whatever it deems necessary to control the pandemic — so conducting surveillance measures like publishing people's addresses in this situation is legal...