NEW DELHI – Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday raised questions over the Aarogya Setu mobile application launched by the Centre to tackle coronavirus, alleging it is a “sophisticated surveillance system outsourced to a private operator, with no institutional oversight”.
In a tweet, Rahul Gandhi said: “The Aarogya Setu application is a sophisticated surveillance system outsourced to a private operator, with no institutional oversight — raising serious data security and privacy concerns. Technology can help keep us safe; but fear must not be leveraged to track citizens without their consent.”
The government on Friday had extended the nationwide lockdown by two more weeks to May 17.
The Home Ministry in the notification had made the use of contact tracing application Aarogya Setu mandatory in containment zones and for all public and private entity employees.
The central government has also made it compulsory for all its employees to download the application and urged private entitles to also ask their respective employees to use it.
Earlier in the day, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said various experts have raised multiple issues of privacy regarding the Aarogya Setu application.
“We are looking at the privacy issues, as also the compulsory deduction of money and hopefully within the next 24 hours we will come up with a more comprehensive and calibrated response on the issue. But, these are areas of concern, we have noted,” Surjewala said in response to a question at a presser.
