As the coronavirus pandemic continues, many governments have partnered with tech companies to fight the virus. However, many tech analysts say that the new COVID-19 tech has startling implications for its user’s privacy.
Many governments around the world, such as China and South Africa, as well as large corporations like Apple and Google, have begun using a type of analysis called ‘contact tracing’ . This technique involves using location tracking on people’s phones to determine who could be at risk of catching the virus.
For example, a contact-tracing app could find out all the people who interacted with someone who tested positive in the days in which that person was asymptomatic.
Using this information, governments can then inform citizens that they were exposed to possible disease vectors. While this tech might seem benign, if not benevolent, in theory, tech experts say that it sets a troubling precedent for when the pandemic is over.
“This is the sort of thing we’ve been telling people to watch out for,” says Kaden Parker, a senior studying computer science at the University of Wyoming. “It’s giving away too much power to the tech companies that run this sort of software.”
While content-tracking apps might be helpful right now, there’s the potential for them to become tools of oppression after the pandemic, Parker says. The software allows those utilizing it to know where everyone with a phone is at every second of the day.
“If governments having that sort of power over people doesn’t scare you, then I don’t know what to tell you,” says Parker.
Governments could use the software to track political opponents or to prevent certain people from leaving certain areas. Companies could use the software to target ads further, as well as sell the data to whoever wants it. The technology erodes the very idea of privacy, says Parker.
While Apple and Google both promised to get rid of the software after the crisis has passed, many are not taking the promise at face value. Tech analysis outlet Recode wrote in a story on the issue last week that consumers now have to trust Apple and Google when they say they are not using the software. They write the changes made to the Android and IOS software to accommodate the software suggest that contact-tracing is here to stay and that any trust in Apple and Google is misplaced.
“Apple and Google’s privacy promises ring hollow to people who have seen how both companies have built themselves on the back of privacy compromises, ” writes tech analysis Sara Morrison in the piece.
In addition, there are concerns about how effective contact-tracing is in stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Early data is still incomplete, but it seems as if using contact-tracing software is largely superfluous when social distancing statutes are already in effect.
China is using contact-tracing to control the movements of hundreds of millions of its citizens. Its infection rate seems to be dropping, but as many health officials are quick to point out, that could be due to any number of other strategies China has already implemented.
A handful of other countries have implemented these measures, but none have implemented it on the same scale as China. Right now, only time will tell whether contact-tracing is a panacea for the virus or a poison pill for privacy.
