Aarogya Setu may be made must for flyers
The government has proposed to make it mandatory for flyers to have Aarogya Setu installed on their mobile phones. If this happens, India will be the first nation after China to make a mobile app compulsory for travel.
“People whose Aarogya Setu app is not ‘green’ are not to be allowed inside the terminal building. Persons above 80 years will also be restricted in the first phase of resumption,” a draft note circulated by the ministry and reviewed by Business
Standard said. A committee of civil aviation ministry, which is finalising the procedures for resumption of air transport, has proposed this among other steps. The committee is headed by a joint secretary and includes the
Directorate General of Civil Aviation,
Airports Authority of
India, CEOS of airlines, and airports.
Airline executives told Business Standard on condition of anonymity that they have raised doubts over the efficiency and hurdles in practical implementation of such a process.
“The government shouldn’t pass the onus of denying boarding to passengers who don’t have a green sign on an app or old age to airlines. This will create mess in the airports. CISF, which have uniformed guards, should be responsible for this,” said an airline executive.
CISF, which guards the Delhi Metro and Indian airports, have already asked the app to be mandatory for passengers.
The app, developed by the government, gives colour-coded designations to users based on their health status and travel history. When two smartphones with the app installed come in each other's bluetooth range, the app collects information. If one of the two have tested positive, the app will alert the other person and in the process allow the government to trace potential cases.
As countries accept the virus is here to stay, they are preparing to restart activities. In such conditions, apps that use bluetooth or GPS locations are being widely used for contact tracing and identifying people who come in contact with a carrier.
Chinese authorities used a ‘health code service’ app for managing people’s movements in and out of affected areas. When the lockdown in Hubei province ended, China allowed residents with a green code to travel within and out of the province.
India has already made Aarogya Setu mandatory for government and private sector employees. But the government’s policy of making the app mandatory has raised questions over data privacy. Rajiv Jain, a spokesperson for the ministry, however, said: “The app is intended to make air travel safer for everybody. It isn’t intended to breach data privacy.”
Prasanth Sugathan, legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center, a digital-rights advocacy group, said: “Firstly, there is this question if it is ethical for a state to make it mandatory for essential service. Except China, all countries in the world have made it voluntary.” Suganathan also raised question on the efficiency of the app. “There are substantial risks of misidentification or a false-positive if the device is switched or is shared between people. Algorithm-based predictive models are not yet ready to be substitute to contact tracing which is done using testing and has manual intervention,” he said.