Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the new software would soon be unveiled in a press briefing on Thursday, previewing a contact tracing project spearheaded by the Canadian Digital Service, a federal agency, and e-commerce giant Shopify.

“It will be up to individual Canadians to decide whether to download the app or not, but the app will be most effective when as many people as possible have it,” Trudeau said, stressing that the initiative is voluntary and secure.

Because it's completely anonymous, because it's low maintenance, because it is completely respectful of your privacy... people can be confident that this is an easy measure that they can have to continue to keep us all safe as we reopen.

Using Bluetooth technology provided by Apple and Google, the app will alert users when they come in close contact with a diagnosed coronavirus patient, who would also have to use the software, inputting some of their health information. Privacy advocates, however, have cast doubt on the government’s claim that the app is “completely anonymous,” arguing that such software is rarely ever fully secure.

“First, ‘complete anonymity’ is bulls**t, please don't listen to politicians about the limitations of surveillance systems,” said Sarah Jamie Harris, executive director of Open Privacy, a Canadian non-profit.

“The Canadian Federal and Provincial governments can't even prevent hospitals from broadcasting plaintext patient health records across major cities,” Harris added. “There is no history of competent handling of healthcare data to back up any privacy claim.”

Though the app has already been hailed as an “important” step in the fight against Covid-19, some critics observed that there was yet no evidence that it actually works. Others questioned whether the initiative would be truly voluntary.