As coronavirus continues to rage throughout the world, many experts are starting to speculate on when and how to loosen federal, state and municipal restrictions on movement and business. There is near unanimous consensus that a vaccine is months, if not years, in the future, and this belief raises the necessity of states and municipalities to develop a robust contact tracing system that can quickly address the inevitable flare ups of the virus, which will allow public health officials to deploy targeted quarantines that will allow the surrounding community to maintain some semblance of normalcy.
Enter tech giants Apple and Google. Both companies are proposing a joint effort to develop contact-tracing capabilities via smartphones that run their operating systems. The short version of the companies' proposal works like this: Android and iOS users would opt in to a contact-tracing app that relies on GPS data from users’ phones. If, for example, a user is diagnosed with coronavirus, the app will be designed to contact other people who have been in close proximity to that individual. As of this writing, the proposal assures that users would be anonymized and that movement and other personal data would not be collected by Apple or Google.
The proposal is similar to programs that are currently being proposed by or used in other countries, such as Israel, which passed emergency measures authorizing its security forces to use mobile data to assist in contact tracing efforts. EU officials have called for a similar program to the one proposed by Apple and Google.
While there is no question that technology, especially mobile technology, will have a large part to play in speeding response times and providing fast and accurate information about coronavirus outbreaks, there is significant potential for problems that must be considered, ranging from mundane technical issues like how stringent the algorithm should be when contacting people to much broader issues, such as unequal access to stable internet and the potential to trample civil liberties.
The ACLU, for example, has already weighed in, noting that, in theory the idea is a good one, but that the developers and the governments that will inevitably use the technology must prove that they properly protect people’s rights. Additionally, the technology relies on people both opting in and respecting the system enough not to abuse it by making false reports or pretending to be someone else.
Another major issue we are tracking is the one of anonymity. Although representatives of Google and Apple have assured that their efforts will effectively anonymize user data, as The Markup noted, tying user data to public health records will make anonymity more difficult and there is great potential for users to be reidentified.
We will continue to watch how developments unfold and how this may affect you.
