Troubling Symptoms

On behalf of the Indian government, in late April, the public-sector company Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited floated a tender for procuring devices to fight the COVID-19 outbreak. The devices included COVID-19 patient-tracking wristbands, fever-scanning tools and hand-held thermal imaging systems. The expectations from these devices, as per a report in the Indian Express, bordered on the magical: “detect, prevent and investigate threats to national security using call data records, internet protocol detail record, tower and mobile phone forensics data”; “geofence an area of interest, such as meeting place, airport, mosque, railway station, bus stand”; “advanced analytics and intelligence software that uses telecom & internet data to identify suspect locations, associations & behaviour”; monitor “everyday behaviour of the person, including where s/he orders food from and the places s/he regularly visits, the multiple routes s/he could take”; “should be able to easily identify close contacts, frequent contacts as well as occasional contacts such as Uber drivers etc, and be able to collect information like where the suspect has spent most of his/her time and who all he or she has met.” To say that the company’s aims with these devices would infringe on the privacy of those being subjected to such surveillance would be an understatement.

The tender came at a time when the government was already facing criticism over the Aarogya Setu app, sponsored and heavily promoted by the central government. The app determines whether users are at the risk of a COVID-19 infection, through accessing the locations they have visited, whether they had “contact” with someone who carried the infection, and self assessment of symptoms. Initially, the government made use of the app mandatory for all public and private employees, and for those living