The TousAntiCovid contact tracing application would have had only one “marginal utility“, according to the Cnil. The app was supposed to inform users of the possibility of contamination in order to encourage them to isolate themselves.
The National Commission for IT and Liberties (Cnil) published, on Monday July 4, 2022, its fifth opinion addressed to Parliament on the conditions for implementing measures against Covid-19. The opportunity to make a new progress report on the actions of the government as well as on the systems and mechanisms put in place to fight against the pandemic, among which we find the tracing of contacts (or contact tracing), via TousAntiCovid, or even the health pass.
And if the Cnil did not oppose the deployment of the StopCovid application, which later became TousAntiCovid, its conclusions are rather nuanced on its effectiveness. In its report, it even specifies that the tracing function, theoretically making it possible to prevent the risks of contamination, had only one “marginal utility“.
“Regarding the evaluation of the TousAntiCovid application, the CNIL notes that, despite the marginal usefulness of the “contact tracing” functionality, the integrated guarantees to preserve privacy allow it to be maintained in the current health context., comments the authority. It also recommends that this function be deactivated outside of “periods of active circulation of the virus“.
The Cnil thus carried out checks, on July 6 and 7, 2021, to verify compliance with the GDPR and the Data Protection Act of certain features of the app. Controls that have not been renewed since these dates, since no substantial update of the functions has occurred since.
The Cnil explains that it also carried out, during the month of August 2021, checks at various establishments, in particular an airport, a restaurant and a museum in order to verify the proper use of the health pass control application called TousAntiCovid Verif . Since September 2021, the authority has also checked various establishments to ensure that they do not keep health passes.
According to government figures, as of January 6, 2022, the app had sent one million notifications since it went live and had been downloaded 50 million times. It has since disappeared from the rankings of the most downloaded apps on application stores.