Though the army officer admitted that movement from peace stations, and locations other than forward posts may be tracked. “Our troops patrolling in sensitive areas are not using mobile phones,” the official said.
India’s COVID-19 tracker mobile application Aarogya Setu may have compromised sensitive information about the deployment of troops and their movement in military bases or spy outposts along the border with China.
Aarogya Setu was the government’s flagship application developed to collect one’s location data and cross-reference it with the state-owned Indian Council of Medical Research’s database of COVID-19 tests to alert a user if an infected person is in close proximity.
Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, an independent geographic information system (GIS)/remote sensing expert, to an interview to the Sputnik, said: “Through the app, one can see if a soldier using Arogya Setu is in a particular camp, or if he is going out to another camp or is being relocated or something like that. By constant measuring, you can see how many people have moved out of the camp and how many are within the camp at that time.”
Raj, alerting the authorities, shared an example through Twitter about how the app can be used to roughly detect numbers of people using the app (which may coincide with a number of troops) in sensitive areas like Pangong Tso where troops of India and China have been engaged in a bitter conflict since April this year.
“With a fake GPS application, you can shift your location to any place. You can simply enter Wagah Border, Pangong Tso, Galwan Valley anything. It is not a big deal. And then you can just open Arogya Setu application and it will show how many common people (COVID-affected) are there, etc.,” Raj said. He also added that Chinese agents may not get the exact numbers of troops at a particular location, but “they will know whether people are moving and they are moving at what direction, what timings, etc.”
Still exploring how #AarogyaSetu data could be used for non-CoVid purposes
It can be used for population spread estimates, crowding in critical places n also in negative way (spying on army bases)
Ex: At 3 PM, 11964 users were in 500 m of Majestic (Bengaluru)
At 7:30 PM -11068! pic.twitter.com/QiHqsb4Vtw— Raj Bhagat P #Mapper4Life (@rajbhagatt) September 6, 2020
“If you are talking about the place where there is only military base, then there is no amount of technical expertise or hacking that is required. But, if you want to figure out which specific building etc., you have to do a little bit of math,” he told the Sputnik.
After Sputnik approached Senior Army official with this query, he has acknowledged that the application could be used to track the location of troops
“We have taken care that troops deployed for forward posts should not use mobile phones. They are communicating through military communication devices. So, their movement or location will not be revealed to the adversaries through Aarogya Setu app,” major general of the Indian Army told Sputnik on Monday.
Though the army officer admitted that movement from peace stations, and locations other than forward posts may be tracked. “Our troops patrolling in sensitive areas are not using mobile phones,” the official said.
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