A hundred academics demand more transparency from the Government with the Radar Covid app | Technology – Explica

More than 110 renowned Spanish academics, most of them technology experts, published a manifesto this Saturday calling for more transparency from the Government in the development of such sensitive software as Radar Covid, the public app for notification of exposures. In the text, they ask that the promised publication of the app code be exhaustive, well documented and encompass all stages of the apps development, from its inception to future changes. Throughout its almost three pages, the signatories applaud the innovative milestone for Spanish public health of this tool, but regret that the Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence, the head of the application, to date there is no published any documentation on the design of Radar Covid, on its implementation or on the integration process of the Autonomous Communities .

The Secretary of State, after constant criticism for not fulfilling the commitment to bring open source to light, has promised to publish the open source code next Wednesday. But it is not yet clear how deep and constant the governments gesture will be: The opening of the code must be accompanied by complete documentation and information, so that the scientific community and civil society have the necessary scrutiny capacity to identify points to improve and contribute to developing and deploying Covid Radar according to the highest standards , the manifesto indicates.

Among the signers of the manifesto are Daniel Innenarity, Professor of Political and Social Philosophy; Carme Torras, professor at the Robotics Institute of the CSIC and member of the National Council of Artificial Intelligence of the Government; Itziar de Lecuona, Unesco Professor of Bioethics at the University of Barcelona and member of the multidisciplinary working group of the Ministry of Science; Carmela Troncoso, promoter of the DP-3T protocol, who uses the Radar Covid app, and recently named by Fortune magazine as one of the most promising figures under 40 years old; Ricardo Baeza-Yates, professor of Data Sciences and member of the National Council of Artificial Intelligence of the Government; Miguel Luengo-Oroz, head of data for the United Nations Global Pulse; Maribel Gonzlez Vasco, professor of Applied Mathematics at the Rey Juan Carlos University; Lorenzo Cotino, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia; Josep-Domingo Ferrer, Unesco Chair in Data Privacy; Juan Tapiador, professor of Computer Science at the Carlos III University, or Jos Molina Molina, president of the Transparency Council of the Region of Murcia.

To questions from EL PAS, sources from the Secretary of State insist on their commitment to publish the code on September 9: We will comply with the commitment to publish on the day and faster than expected. It is something unprecedented in the Spanish public administration and an exercise in transparency , they say, adding: Lets hope that when the code is released, whoever looks at it, fiddles around and helps to verify and improve the tool.

The manifesto praises the achievement of the Spanish Administration in launching an app like Radar Covid, but a tool with such penetration (more than 3.4 million downloads), so sensitive and that should generate trust, needs an exemplary and flawless process and to serve as a precedent for future software developments: There is no technology without flaws and therefore multidisciplinary scrutiny is necessary to achieve the best result, they say in the text. Only an open and joint work, they continue, can efficiently identify potential biases and errors in the conceptualization and implementation of the application that may lead to undesired effects in terms of discrimination and violation of rights. Nothing in the text implies that there are errors or problems with the app, but the only way to know is with public scrutiny. To make it possible, and after waiting for weeks for the insides of the application to be known, they establish a series of essential elements that the Government must publish.

One of the most relevant points is to know the code that allows analyzing all the elements of the tracking system, including the servers, governance and the app itself, which has already been downloaded by more than 3.4 million Spaniards. Where are they, who manages them and what security measures have been adopted both for the deployment at the national level and relative to the autonomous communities, ask the academics along with the evolution of the code since the beginning of the initiative. The revision of previous versions is necessary because not all users periodically update their mobiles, they add.

The transparency required to release Radar Covid does not only respond to technical aspects. Building the application in a certain way depends on another series of decisions, such as the adoption of the decentralized communication protocol in order to preserve the anonymity of the users. For this reason, they understand that it is vital to have the system design report: detailing the analyzes that have led to deciding the configuration parameters and use of the Google and Apple notification exposure API, the implemented mechanisms and the libraries and services used to evaluate the security and privacy of the data, as well as the evaluation of the inclusion and accessibility of the design .

Privacy has aroused a certain suspicion among society. The Government and numerous experts have defended that Radar Covid respects it at all times. The use of bluetooth and built-in protocols, such as the generation of random alphanumeric codes that track phones against each other, prevent individual identification. To verify this, the signatories want a detailed report that contains, as required, the application monitoring mechanisms and associated mechanisms to ensure privacy and compliance with data protection regulations, referring to the data collected both during the pilot as in the production phase .

With the intention of settling any doubts and democratizing a process as novel in Spain as the construction of a useful app against a pandemic, they also require an impact assessment on data protection based on the design report and associated risk analysis to the application , as well as identifying the responsibilities and role played in the project by private entities.

In the absence of the Secretary of State releasing the code, the manifesto recalls that Radar Covid is simply a complementary measure. It does not replace manual trackers or exclude the need to maintain a safety distance or use masks. In order to guarantee the impact of the application, it is necessary to adopt legal and budgetary measures of social support that allow users to follow the recommendations of the app without suffering economic, labor or social damage, the academics say.

Under the idea of tackling the health emergency on all fronts, the signatories go beyond the technological issue. In his opinion, to all the effort made must be added a supervision that identifies potential discriminatory abuses in areas such as housing, the labor market and education. Only a joint interdisciplinary effort and with civil society can efficiently identify potential biases and errors in the conceptualization and implementation of the application that can lead to undesired effects, they reason.

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A hundred academics demand more transparency from the Government with the Radar Covid app | Technology - Explica