The Malaysian application called “My Sejahtera”, for My Serenity in French, is the subject of a lively controversy around the questions of private life and free.
What happened in Malaysia that calls for a boycott of the local contact tracing application My Sejahtera have multiplied in recent days? At the end of March, the site CodeBlue discovered that the tool which helps to detect and trace Covid-19 patients has been dearly sold, by its owner, to a private company. But to understand what shocks here, we must return to the beginnings of the case.
The commodification of applications could challenge the protection of user privacy
At the start of the pandemic, taken very seriously in Southeast Asia, the Malaysian government was offered the contact tracing application My Sejahtera free of charge, with guaranteed operation at no cost for one year, to combat the pandemic. Suddenly, free has blown up the traditional procedure of public order, which goes through the call for tenders.
Once the free year has passed, the application has obviously become very attractive, with the cost of its intellectual property and its license at stake. And at the end of March, the Malaysians therefore learned that the owner of the application had transferred ownership of the tool to another private company, for the amount of 73 million euros and for five years. operation. In short, local authorities have never owned an application yet used in a regulated health framework, and by millions of users.
Beyond the financial element, what shocks in Malaysia are the potential repercussions on the protection of the privacy of citizens, even if the government guarantees a quarterly deletion of data. The application, it could be reused by the government to fight against other diseases. Faced with the scandal, the number of QR codes scanned on the application to enter a place plunged by 21% in just a few weeks.
Source : franceinfo
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