Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed Ministers Zeev Elkin (Higher Education and Water Resources) and  Yizhar Shai (Minister of Science and Technology) to develop a plan that would enable the government the be able to force citizens to download and use the Health Ministry’s Magen 2 tracking phone application. Netanyahu asked the Ministers to do this so that the government would be able to force all Israelis wishing to enter a mall, shopping center, or workplaces, to download and use the app that is aimed at curtailing the spread of the Coronavirus.

Netanyahu requested of the two ministers, who in the past few months have been working on finding a solution for the issue so that authorities would be able to see people’s interactions and track the infection should someone spread the virus. Through this method, Netanyahu hopes to replace the Secret service consistently monitoring everyone’s phones and sending text messages to people if they were in a location where a person who was positive with the virus was present.

Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said in a recent Corona Cabinet meeting that the application works but it is impossible to get function properly if people don’t download it and use it. “I’m giving up on using digital technology to track the virus. It hasn’t worked successfully in any country that has tried it. Additionally, legislating a solution also hasn’t worked. The past months have proven that the public simply isn’t complying.”

The Magen 2 phone application is considered to be more accurate than the secret service’s phone tracking technologies. But as of now, only 1 million Israelis have downloaded it and most who downloaded it erased it. “The app also doesn’t send any information to the authorities, thus when a person gets an alert that they may have been exposed they can simply ignore it with no repercussions.”

Yizhar Shai said: “We need to convince people that ‘big brother’ isn’t tracking their movements, and has no interest in doing so in order to get them to download the app. A workplace has the interest to upkeep their Purple safety designation and to protect the health of its workers. We will look into positive incentives that we can give people and employers to download and use the application. In addition, we have to think about the 500,000 phone owners, most of whom are ultra-orthodox Jews, that have cell phones that are not smartphones. Government workers, who have been given phones from their employers, which includes police officers and soldiers, the employers can make the possession of the phone conditional on downloading the app.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)