This Friday morning, Stéphane Richard was interviewed by France Inter and said his company, Orange, already enjoys a prototype for an application enabling to track contacts between smartphone users via Bluetooth and alert them if they have been near people infected by covid-19.
A message directly sent to the members of the government who chose to ask the INRIA (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) to develop the StopCovid application.
Orange CEO is in favor of digitally tracking people to try and curb the coronavirus epidemic: “if one thinks technology can help phasing out of the epidemic, it should be used”. He also hailed Apple and Google’s decision as they are preparing to track infected people on their iOS and Android exploitation systems.
CEO of the multinational adds that tracking people cannot be done without the agreement of users: it “should be based on consent”. He says his application relies on Bluetooth technology saving a history of all electronic devices met but it’s not about geolocation.
The CEO of the biggest phone operator in France also thinks the application should plan – from the very beginning – the possibility to erase private data if asked by the user and even plan to erase them “in a few months” for everyone.
