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The Spanish government will be able to geolocate citizens while the state of alarm is in force, as well as in days prior to its being decreed, when the coronavirus contagion started to spread, using data provided by different mobile network operators.

According to an order published this Saturday in the Official State Journal (BOE), the National Institute of Statistics will geolocate mobile phones, and the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation will write a report based on these movements to determine the main transmission routes of coronavirus and design a model for effectively combatting it effectively.

The ministry of health app

According to the Official State Journal, the ministry of health plans to launch an app that "will allow the user to carry out a self-assessment based on the medical symptoms they report, on the probability of being infected by Covid-19, offer the user information about the virus and provide practical advice and recommendations for actions to be taken according to the assessment." This application is similar to the one launched on March 18 by the Department of Health on Covid-19.

In view of these measures, Jon Iñarritu, deputy for the Basque Country party Bildu asked for an explanation via Twitter

Translation:

"I think someone should give explanations, don't you?"

- Jon Inarritu

The measure is similar to one that was implemented by National Institute of Statistics (INE) to study the mobility of citizens, which was authorised by operators, but not by users. In response to the criticism raised by the initiative, the INE, stated that the data was completely anonymous.