MediaMax, Armenia
March 31 2020
Yerevan/Mediamax/. Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia, Commandant Tigran Avinyan has commented on the government’s draft law regarding the access to the personal data about phone calls and SMS texts of citizens.
“Let’s say, I am an infected person. The automated system will show an employee of the Ministry of Emergency Situations my movement and the places I have visited, and if we combine that with the data about my phone calls, we can see with whom I’ve had contacts. The mentioned employee will call these people and ask them: “Have you come into contact with Tigran Avinyan recently?”
Our only goal is to inform these people, locate them and ask them to self-isolate. Being uninformed and unregistered in the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention is a potential source of spread of coronavirus. When people know they have come into contact with an infected person, they become very careful,” said Avinyan.
He has underlined that the bill does not indicate the government can decode the content of the citizens’ phone calls and SMS texts.