Use of the Stay Safe app will be mandated in LGUs

He said the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) will mandate local government units (LGUs) and establishments to use the contact tracing Stay Safe app, which is expected to help make contact tracing more effective.

Today, Stay Safe app has 15 million users, operating in 700 LGUs and 200,000 buildings nationwide.

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According to DILG Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya, LGUs can also integrate their own contact tracing app with Stay Safe.

“Iyong ating mga kababayan sa Valenzuela, for example, can continue using the ValTrace app kasi iyong datos na makukuha sa ValTrace app, will be forwarded to StaySafe,” Malaya explained.

Contact tracing is one of the visible measures that can help to control the spread of COVID-19, in addition to testing and identifying disease infections, and isolating them.

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According to the app developer, Google Apple exposure notification (GAEN system) is used for the app to detect people.

GAEN uses Bluetooth and not GPS, so the app allegedly does not track the location of its users.

When a resident is marked in the app as confirmed, probable, or suspected COVID-19 cases, it will be known which establishments he is from.

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Also read: NTF adviser says PH’s fight vs. COVID-19 not yet lost

Use of the Stay Safe app will be mandated in LGUs

But data privacy consulting firm ePrivacyNow believes Stay Safe app should still be guarded.

“Still, your location data can be accessed. And then at the same time, what’s really alarming is they can get data coming from different accounts,” said ePrivacyNow CEO Israel Brizuela.

“That should be donated to DICT (Department of Information and Communications Technology), not really DILG. That connotes something that it’s really a surveillance app,” Brizuela added.

DILG officer-in-charge Bernardo Florece Jr. reminded the public that contact tracing is required under the law and violators can face punishment.

There will also be a training and information drive for app users.

On Tuesday, contact tracing czar Benjamin Magalong admitted that the efficiency ratio of contact tracing is declining.

Magalong explained that the efficiency ratio is only from 1:7, 1:3 to 1:5, where only the contact traced is a family member.