437: Aarogya Setu App Row: Health Surveillance or State Surveillance?

Published: May 6, 2020, 2:54 p.m.

The Aarogya Setu app advertised heavily by the government to serve the purpose of contact tracing of COVID-19, is raising privacy concerns amongst experts.

On 6 May, French cybersecurity expert and hacker who goes by the pseudonym “Elliot Alderson” also claimed on twitter that the security vulnerability in the app allows an attacker to “know who is infected, unwell, made a self assessment in the area of his choice.”

But even as Indian citizens, opposition members, cyber security and legal experts have been pointing out several security loopholes in the app for days, the government made it mandatory for office goers and residents of containment zones to use the app.

So what are the conceivable risks in Aarogya Setu app? How does it handle our data? And what has the government’s response been to the criticisms so far? Tune in to The Big Story!

Producer and Host: Shorbori Purkayastha
Guests:
Aditi Agarwal, Senior Research Associate at MediaNama
Vakasha Sachdev, Legal Editor, The Quint
Editor: Shelly Walia

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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