Aarogya Setu becomes open source: What does it mean?

Ever since the launch of the Aarogya Setu app back in April 2020 there have been several questions around user privacy and security. Given the application uses Bluetooth and location data to find out whether a user has come in contact with a Covid-19 positive person or not it has been criticised when it comes to handling user data. In the past few months, several developers and researchers have called out the contact tracing application for putting user data at risk.

As an answer to that today the government of India has made the Android version of the Aarogya Setu app open source, which means developers will be able to inspect the source code of the app and modify for changes. The source code of the Android version is already available for review and collaboration. All developers and researchers can visit this link to participate: https://github.com/nic-delhi/AarogyaSetu_Android.git