ACTIVITY TRACKING AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC EXCITES MUCH-DEBATED PRIVACY ISSUES
COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Covid-19 is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered virus for which humans have no preexisting immunity. It has been 4 months since first Coronavirus patient is diagnosed and since then the number of cases has risen rapidly. Worldwide, there are more than 900 thousand confirmed cases, potentially more as testing is still limited, and more than 50 thousand deaths according to World Health Organization (WHO) now.
The virus originated in a seafood market in Wuhan, China and then spread to South Korea. As the virus is extremely contagious and spreads easily from person to person, it killed thousands of people in Asia. Since currently there is no treatment, Asian governments took extensive, extreme for some, precautions to stop the spread of virus employing technology. As a result, China reported no new local infections for the first time on March 19th and number of cases in South Korea have dropped sharply. The new center of the disease is now Europe and the USA as USA, Italy and Spain take the lead in terms of total number of confirmed cases. But what were some of the initiatives that (Asian) governments take to stop the virus?
BEST-CASE GOVERNMENT EXAMPLES IN FIGHTING WITH COVID-19
Currently, there are no specific vaccines or treatments for COVID-19 so the only thing governments can do besides ongoing clinical trials, is prevent the virus spreading more. Governments around the world have boosted their surveillance of individuals by gathering location data using smartphones and data from mobile networks.
Here are some examples on technological initiatives that governments took:
China: Government-installed CCTV cameras at the door of those under two-week quarantine to prevent them leaving their apartments. The health status of individuals is tracked via mobile applications.
South Korea: Government track confirmed cases by using credit card transactions, smartphone location data and (over 8 million) CCTV cameras. The result enables authorities to see where the disease is moving.
Singapore: Government released an app called “TraceTogether” that can be used to see if potential COVID-19 carriers have been in close contact with others.
Hong Kong: Government requires citizens to wear a wristband linked to a smartphone app which alerts authorities if a person leaves their place of quarantine.
PUBLIC — PRIVATE COLLABORATION: WHAT TYPE OF ROLES DO TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES HAVE?
On contrary to Asia where the spread of virus seems to be under control, COVID-19 shows no sign of slowing in West. US government recently estimated that 200,000 people may be killed by COVID-19 nationwide. Record number of daily deaths has been announced in France and Spain at the first week of April. UK is another western country struggling to fight with the disease with more than 33 thousand cases among which there is Prince Charles and Prime Minister Johnson.
As the importance and effectiveness of surveillance for combating the disease is somewhat proven in Asia, working with technology giants such as Facebook, Google and Palantir and startups such as Zensors in addition to telecom companies may be a way out for Western governments.
Palantir works closely with CDC in the US and NHS in UK to visualize the spread of the virus and to anticipate hospital needs through its Palantir Foundry Platform. It is reported that company is also pitching its analytics software Foundry and Gotham tool, which is known to track individuals, to authorities in France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
Facebook and Google among tech giants are in discussion with governments about using aggregate anonymized location and movement data of individuals. Facebook says it is creating disease-prevention maps that draw on Facebook location data and other sources that are available to researchers.
Zentors, an activity monitoring startup that uses machine learning technology, received inquiries from airports regarding utilizing its technology to track people’s behavior amid COVID-19 pandemic. Company will provide its platform for free to forefront clients such as airports that combat with the disease.
PRIVACY CONCERNS RISE
Coronavirus is pushing governments over the edge to take extreme measures, but the level of surveillance and amount of individual data collected is unlikely to be easily accepted especially by the liberal countries. Rights organizations argue that with monitoring capabilities improve, it may be hard for governments to scale down. In addition, experts are worried that there may be no timeline on when governments will stop collecting that kind of information.
Although especially in Europe, collected individual data is anonymized and protected by data protection laws, in the US people are worried given the previous data leakage scandals. In order to mitigate privacy concerns, public and private collaboration should use anonymized data during the period of pandemic and come up with a timeline which limits data collection to health emergencies. We will see how things turn out!
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/01/palantir-coronavirus-cdc-nhs-gotham-foundry/
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/20/what-are-the-rules-wrapping-privacy-during-covid-19/
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/04/01/zoom-surge-coronavirus-covid-19-privacy-concerns/
