Should Social Tracing for Public Health Trump Privacy Concerns?

As the global coronavirus pandemic continues to rage across the world, many countries have begun to weigh the trade-off between aggressive contact tracing and individual privacy.  While many health experts credited aggressive social tracing to be the reason for lower death tolls in Germany and China as compared to counterparts like the United Kingdom and the United States, which did not practice social tracing, many wonder at what cost to privacy will new efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 come.

Technology and Social Tracing Apps for Coronavirus Screening

For months now, technology giants like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all began to provide services that allow users to “screen” themselves for coronavirus symptoms.  For example, Apple teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the White House to offer a mobile application and website that offered itself as a resource and screening application for COVID-19.  

In terms of screening, the application conducts a review by giving you prompts that ask about any recent symptoms, travel, and social contact you may have had with others potentially infected with the virus.  After reviewing answers submitted, it then directs you to a page that will suggest whether or not you should seek professional care and testing.  Apple has been very upfront about the fact that the application should not be taken as a replacement for professional care, it does not share information without consent, and that it cannot provide information as to where the nearest testing center will be.  The social tracing applications offered by other companies operate very similarly.

Aggressive Social Tracing for Stopping Spread of Virus Raises Privacy Concerns

A recent announcement from Apple and Google touts a new joint effort to utilize Bluetooth technology to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 has many privacy experts raising their eyebrows.  Starting in May, both Apple and Google intend to release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices that will help public health authorities track the spread of COVID-19 via social tracing.  Through the use of mobile devices, public health officials hope to be able to trace the contact between infected citizens and others in hopes of stemming the spread of the virus.  

Basically, once an infected user is identified, public health officials will be able to track what contact the user has had with others because the new technology requires the constant upload and exchange of identifier beacons between communicating devices for social tracing.  While the technology is currently limited to mobile applications that must be downloaded by users, Google and Apple have both confirmed that they intend to launch a Bluetooth-based platform soon.  As the technology has not been officially released yet, many experts are awaiting further details from both companies before giving official comment.

Key Takeaways Regarding The Use of Social Tracing 

The continued spread of coronavirus has begun to mobilize technology companies to develop and release new technology that proposes to stem the spread of coronavirus through social tracing.  Such technology has privacy experts on edge, however, because:

• it has the potential to collect and disseminate sensitive data on not only the infected citizens but those they have come into contact with;

• there are no current federal laws in place to protect citizens against such measures;

• there are no explicit limitations on the use of such data; and

• such technology assigns identifiers to each citizen.

You may also be interested in: