Moscow quarantine enforcement app creates enforcement problems

Thousands of Muscovites ordered to download a hastily-developed app to enforce their quarantine report that they have been wrongly geolocated and fined and that the app has trapped them into compliance criteria that are impossible to meet. The app, which demands an exceptionally broad range of permission and stores the data on Moscow’s servers for a year, is compulsory for everyone with respiratory disease symptoms. Officials say it has helped keep the city’s death rate as low as 3.8%. Some complainants also have said their doctors failed to advise them of the requirement, and others said the platform prevented them from receiving medical care for other ailments because seeing a doctor meant extending the quarantine. Even after recovery, patients found it difficult to obtain the “digital pass” necessary to leave their homes. Many are concerned that Russia will use the pandemic to increase surveillance generally. More than 400 fines for failing to provide a selfie when demanded in the middle of the night have been cancelled.

Source: Financial Times

Writer: Max Seddon