Opinion: Given the coronavirus’ catastrophic dimensions, everything that can help, including using personal data to track and stop the disease, should be considered
, an independent executive branch agency tasked with ensuring that efforts to protect the U.S. from terrorism appropriately safeguard privacy and civil liberties. Edward Felten is a member of the board. Their views do not necessarily reflect those of the board or other board members.
Given the epidemic’s catastrophic dimensions, everything that can help, including using personal data to track and stop the disease, should be considered. As after 9/11, the question now is not whether new programs are needed, but how to implement them.
The various ways to use location data, for example, present vastly different levels of concern for privacy.location data, which combines many individualized location trails to show broader trends, is possible with few privacy risks, using methods that ensure no individual’s location trail is reconstructable from released data.
Measures taken by other countries in response to Covid-19 illustrate why such limits are important. South Korea published online the location trails of people diagnosed with the virus. While this may be help others determine whether they were exposed, it is also a significant infringement on privacy; the “anonymized” location trails were easily de-anonymized by combining patterns of movement with publicly available data, such as home addresses.
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