After MIT tech review downgrades Aarogya Setu rating, source code for iphone app made public
After much public debate and demands from the developer community, the union government announced it might be making the foundation code for Aarogya Setu public.
The source code will be produced available to the general public on Github on Tuesday midnight. Essentially, open-sourcing the code allows the developer community to review the code, find bugs and vulnerabilities in it, thereby making the application form more secure later on.
The Aarogya Setu app, downloaded by a lot more than 11.5 crore persons till now, is intended for contact tracing through the Covid-19 pandemic. For many weeks, privacy activists have criticised the app’s unclear privacy policy and closed source nature.
In a rare move, the decision to open source Aarogya Setu was announced at a press conference in New Delhi. Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, said the federal government had always planned to open source the code. However, its immediate priority was contact-tracing. “So we centered on [contact-tracing]. Now we are so that it is open source,” he said.
Currently, only the code for the Android version of the application is being made open source. Ajay Prakash Sawhney, secretary, Meity, said 98 % of all users were using it on an Android device, hence it is the predominant platform. He added that over a period of time, the KaiOS (Jio phones) and iOS (Apple phones) versions will be made available too. The state news release says the server-side code too will be made public subsequently.
Sawhney dismissed reports of privacy concerns. He said, “[Aarogya Setu] is among the finest contact-tracing programs [...] It is built with privacy at heart.”
It might be noted that only a few days ago, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review, who studied the app, graded it with one out of five stars, downgrading it from the sooner two stars. The researchers felt the iphone app collected a lot more data than it needed.
The government in addition has announced an incentive programme for developers who find bugs in the foundation code and recommend code improvement. In both cases, they stand to win Rs 1 lakh each.
The app has reportedly helped identify five lakh people who had interact of these who had tested positive for Covid-19. The National Health Authority has reached out to nine lakh people overall to advise about quarantine, testing or caution, said the news release.
Also, more than two-thirds of the 11.5 crore people who downloaded the iphone app have used its ‘self-assessment’ feature.
