Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at The Same Time - The New Yorker

2/21/23, 9:45 AM Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at the Same Time?
| The New Yorker
Annals of Technology
Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect

Privacy at the Same Time?
By Sue Halpern
April 27, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/can-we-track-covid-19-and-protect-privacy-at-the-same-time 1/13
2/21/23, 9:45 AM Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at the Same Time? | The New Yorker
Will Americans allow the government to track them via their phones, in order to beat back a deadly
pandemic? Photograph by Tom Brenner / Reuters
aroline Buckee, a top epidemiologist at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of

C Public Health, has devoted her professional life to studying malaria and
other infectious diseases. As news of a novel coronavirus emerged from China,
Buckee realized that her area of expertise—how infectious diseases evolve as they
move through vulnerable populations—would be valuable to health-care workers
and elected officials as the virus spread across the globe. “The methods and the
tools are the same, and epidemiological models are easily adapted,” Buckee told
me. “But, for many of us, like me, we work with endemic pathogens. covid-19 is
new. There is so much we don’t know.” Since the most urgent imperative was to
“flatten the curve” of infections, it was crucial to know where public-health
strategies like stay-at-home orders were working and where they were not. Buckee
quickly assembled a consortium of infectious-disease researchers to make the data
accessible to policymakers—data that they did not yet have.
At just about the same time, Ian Allen, a former marine and C.I.A. paramilitary
officer, cold-called Harvard’s School of Public Health and asked if there was
anything that his new company, Camber Systems, could do to help with the
pandemic. Soon afterward, Allen was connected with Buckee, the associate
director of the School of Public Health’s Center for Communicable Disease
Dynamics. Buckee had created the covid-19 Mobility Data Network, a network
of epidemiologists from universities around the world, to try to track the efficacy
of social-distancing measures. Allen agreed to provide Buckee with the software to
query and scrub data collected by tech companies and use it to track the
coronavirus’s spread without violating Americans’ privacy. “I wasn’t really expecting
ever to hear back, assuming that Harvard, of all places, would have all the
resources they’d ever need,” Allen told me, while standing in a field in rural
Virginia as his son shot at tin cans with a BB gun. (Like many parents, Allen has
been homeschooling his children during the pandemic; this was geometry class.)
“Caroline asked me if we could help aggregate location data. Just aggregating the
data and anonymizing it in the right way to protect privacy would take some of
the burden off of her.” Allen reached out to a handful of data firms, including
Unacast, Kochava, and X-Mode. All agreed to provide their data for free.
Which of the following brands have you heard of? (select all applicable)
Mint Velvet Whistles
Boden hush
None of the above NEXT
Camber Systems, of which Allen is the C.E.O., is a year-old startup that, among
other things, hopes to offer federal, state, and local government agencies ways to
use commercially harvested location data to improve their operations without
violating privacy laws. Shortly before the pandemic, Allen and his business
partner, Navin Vembar, a mathematician who served as the chief technology
officer of the General Services Administration, were searching for potential
clients, talking with officials in Madison, Wisconsin, about using location data to
shore up tourism and distribute the city’s public resources equitably. Assisting
Buckee’s covid-19 Mobility Data Network was the kind of project they
envisioned when they launched their company with Hangar, a venture-capital firm
that funds companies that use technology in the public interest.
Read The New Yorker’s complete news coverage and analysis of the coronavirus
pandemic.
By presenting aggregated location data in an accessible and searchable format for

epidemiologists studying covid-19, the project would enable researchers and
policymakers to see how members of the public move around their communities.
When paired with other metrics, such as the number of new infections or
mortality rates, the data would guide policymakers as they grappled with when
and where to lift stay-at-home orders. Facebook is also supplying the network
with data. According to Buckee, correspondence between the various groups gives
researchers confidence in the trends they are seeing. “One data set is not going to
show what’s going on,” she said.
Location data are the bread and butter of “ad tech.” They let marketers know you
recently shopped for running shoes, are trying to lose weight, and have an abiding
affection for kettle corn. Apps on cell phones emit a constant trail of longitude
and latitude readings, making it possible to follow consumers through time and
space. Location data are often triangulated with other, seemingly innocuous slivers
of personal information—so many, in fact, that a number of data brokers claim to
have around five thousand data points on almost every American. It’s a lucrative
business—by at least one estimate, the data-brokerage industry is worth two
hundred billion dollars. Though the data are often anonymized, a number of
studies have shown that they can be easily unmasked to reveal identities—names,
addresses, phone numbers, and any number of intimacies. As Buckee knew,
public-health surveillance, which serves the community at large, has always
bumped up against privacy, which protects the individual. But, in the past, public-
health surveillance was typically conducted by contract tracing, with health-care
workers privately interviewing individuals to determine their health status and
trace their movements. It was labor-intensive, painstaking, memory-dependent
work, and, because of that, it was inherently limited in scope and often incomplete
or inefficient. (At the start of the pandemic, there were only twenty-two hundred
contact tracers in the country.)
Digital technologies, which work at scale, instantly provide detailed information

culled from security cameras, license-plate readers, biometric scans, drones, G.P.S.
devices, cell-phone towers, Internet searches, and commercial transactions. They
can be useful for public-health surveillance in the same way that they facilitate all
kinds of spying by governments, businesses, and malign actors. South Korea,
which reported its first covid-19 case a month after the United States, has
achieved dramatically lower rates of infection and mortality by tracking citizens
with the virus via their phones, car G.P.S. systems, credit-card transactions, and
public cameras, in addition to a robust disease-testing program. Israel enlisted
Shin Bet, its secret police, to repurpose its terrorist-tracking protocols. China
programmed government-installed cameras to point at infected people’s doorways
to monitor their movements.
As unlikely as it may seem that such privacy-compromising measures will be

adopted in the United States, the Trump Administration reportedly summoned
tech executives to the White House to discuss sharing data with the government.
Not much is known about the meeting. The Administration has classified all its
discussions about covid-19, and it later denounced Politico for reporting that the
White House was in talks with tech firms to create a national coronavirus
surveillance system. Last week, Gizmodo reported that Palantir, a secretive data-
analytics firm owned by the conservative billionaire and the Trump backer Peter
Thiel, has a contract from the Trump Administration to build a database to track
the spread of the virus. Palantir is best known for its work with the N.S.A. and
ice, where its software is used to track undocumented immigrants. (Other private
surveillance companies, most notably the Israeli firm NSO, are also pitching
covid-19 tracing to governments around the world.)
“We’re all too familiar with the historical record of crises, where new powers in
the hands of governments and corporations lead to them holding on to them
indefinitely,” Adam Schwartz, a lawyer with the digital-rights group the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, told me. Schwartz pointed out that most of the sweeping
investigative powers given to the intelligence community after the 9/11 terrorist
attack are still in place nearly two decades later. As Senator Maria Cantwell wrote,
on April 9th, in her opening remarks for a paper hearing by the Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on the role of Big Tech
during the pandemic, “Rights and data surrendered temporarily during an
emergency can become very difficult to get back.”
As difficult as it is now to look ahead, lawmakers like Cantwell and privacy

advocates like Schwartz are asking us to think about how much privacy we are
willing to sacrifice to combat a rampaging virus. If we accept government data
tracking, the surveillance necessary to curtail covid-19 could become a permanent
fixture in our lives. It’s an unknowable trade-off. “In this particular case, if we have
technology for minimizing harm, we have a moral obligation to use it,” Marcello
Ienca, a bioethicist at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, told me. “But we have to
merge it with the best available technology in the areas of cybersecurity and
privacy.” To do this right, Ienca added, the public-health experts need to work
with privacy advocates.
Buckee agrees. “We’ve spent several years thinking about privacy,” she said,
referring to herself and her Harvard colleagues, who worry that “some of the
companies offering their services might not be totally aware of the debate around
this.” Buckee has made sure that the Mobility Data Network Web site
prominently features the group’s strict privacy policies. She will soon publish a
paper in a medical journal (Vembar, the C.T.O. of Camber Systems, is a co-
author) that includes, among other things, privacy-preserving best practices that
she believes should be used during the pandemic. “We have to be explicit about
what happens to this data,” she said. “It’s not as simple as deleting a file.” Because
the location data Camber Systems receives from data brokers can be exploited to
expose personal information, Allen and Vembar do not release it to Buckee’s
researchers. Instead, they aggregate and spike the data sets with probabilistic math
to create noise that makes it difficult for anyone to zero in on particular
individuals. And, if any of their data sets rely on a small number of devices, they
eliminate them, since those can be revealing as well.
The result of their work is Camber Systems’ “Social Distancing Reporter.” A page
on the covid-19 Data Mobility Network Web site, it lets the public see, county by
county, where people are moving around—or not—in predictable ways, like going
to work, and unpredictable ways, like gathering in parks or travelling out of state.
Because of privacy concerns, only Buckee’s researchers are allowed to dig through
data at the census-tract level, which is more granular. “One reason we don’t go
public with data below the county level is that, if there are poor neighborhoods
where people are moving around a lot because they have to go to essential jobs, we
don’t want to put a target on them,” Vembar said. Buckee told me that they want
to be mindful that even anonymous data could lead to discrimination against
people who live in certain neighborhoods.
Studying mobility data isn’t about determining individuals’ risk levels; instead, it
asks whether public-health risks are being appropriately managed. That’s
especially useful for policymakers and health-care professionals, but, in the face of
a virus that has us eyeing one another warily over our masks, understanding our
personal vulnerability is the first thing most of us want to know. It would be easy
to figure out if we’ve been in contact with someone who has tested positive for
covid-19 if we were required to wear an identifying badge that displayed our
infection status. But that goes against Americans’ expectations of civil liberties and
privacy rights, even in a pandemic. Constant digital surveillance as we move
through the day might accomplish the same thing, but it clearly violates our
privacy. Even less comprehensive monitoring with digital technology that updates
traditional contact tracing by alerting us when we’ve been near a person who is
covid-19-positive “may fail to protect data, or can be misused or extended far
beyond [its] initial purpose,” members of a pan-European consortium warned
recently. Members of the group, known as DP-3T, are among a handful of
technologists around the world building “proximity tracing” apps that aim to
preserve privacy. They say that the software they have developed requires
participants to opt in, does not store personal information, and will experience a
“graceful dismantling” after the pandemic is over. The group has posted its code
on the Internet, where it is available for free to health authorities.
The privacy-conscious contact-tracing software that has got the most attention,
though, does not yet exist. On April 10th, the day after Cantwell’s hearing, Google
and Apple announced that they were collaborating on a new software interface
similar to the one developed by the academics in Europe. It will use low-level
Bluetooth signals to alert anyone whose Android device or iPhone has come near
a phone owned by an infected person in the past two weeks. Participation will be
voluntary, and the companies say that no identifying data will be exchanged or
stored. If a user is diagnosed with the coronavirus, it is up to them to inform the
app, which then notifies anyone whose phone has been near that phone. It also
assumes that the phones are being carried by their owners.
Will this work? Technically, yes: phones can communicate with one another. (As
they do, third-party apps are likely to grab their location data, too.) Bluetooth,
though, is notoriously glitchy. Will the app report contact between people who
live in adjoining apartments because Bluetooth penetrates walls? What about
people who are out for a walk in the open air? “Such false positives will both waste
valuable resources in terms of testing people who were not actually exposed as well
as cause people to turn off the app,” Susan Landau, a professor of cybersecurity at
Tufts University, told me.
If, somehow, the technology itself can be made to work well enough, will it make a
difference to public health? That’s unclear. The efficacy of contact tracing hinges
on the existence of widespread, accessible, free testing. So far, that is not
something health authorities have been able to offer in this country. It also
depends on people owning smartphones. (Additionally, Android users need the
right phone.) And it requires a significant number of those phone owners to
choose to participate in the program. It’s not known yet what that number is. If
too few people participate, the app is likely to generate a false sense of security.
Sharing one’s medical status is also voluntary—another weak link. Landau also
pointed out that “contact-tracing apps cannot handle asymptomatic carriers. As
long as asymptomatic carriers are a significant portion of the population, the
contact-tracing apps create a serious risk of missing the fact that someone has
been exposed.”
The Google-Apple application interface will be released in May to public-health
agencies. In June, the companies plan to add the software to their operating
systems. It’s too early to know how widely it will be adopted, if it will assuage
people’s fears, whether it will improve health outcomes—or if, as the Cambridge
University researcher Ross Anderson said, it’s just an expression of “do-
something-itis.” Yet watching Big Tech, which has often played fast and loose
with users’ personal information, embrace Buckee’s belief that public health and
civic health should not be mutually exclusive is an encouraging development. “The
rate of scientific collaboration and output right now is just astonishing,” she told
me the first time we talked. A few days later, when I checked in with Buckee, she
said, “It’s absolutely exhausting, often quite emotional, and completely all-
consuming. I go to sleep thinking about covid-19. I wake up thinking about
covid-19. It’s the same for everyone I know working on this. All my colleagues
check on each other, we try to go outside at least once a day to walk and clear our
heads, but usually we end up on a call while we’re walking. I don’t know how we
can sustain this pace, but there is so much to do.”
A Guide to the Coronavirus

How to practice social distancing, from responding to a sick housemate to
the pros and cons of ordering food.
How the coronavirus behaves inside a patient.
Can survivors help cure the disease and rescue the economy?
The long crusade of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious-disease expert pinned
between Donald Trump and the American people.
The success of Hong Kong and Singapore in stemming the spread holds
lessons for how to contain it in the United States.
The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine is
widely available.
With each new virus, we have scrambled for a new treatment. Can we
prepare antivirals to combat the next global crisis?
How pandemics have propelled public-health innovations, prefigured
revolutions, and redrawn maps.
What to read, watch, cook, and listen to under coronavirus quarantine.
Sue Halpern is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of, most recently, the novel
“Summer Hours at the Robbers Library.”
More: Coronavirus Big Data Privacy Public Health Coronavirus Treatment and Testing
The Daily
The best of The New Yorker, every day, in your in-box, plus occasional alerts
when we publish major stories.
E-mail address
Your e-mail address
Sign up
By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement.
Read More
Coronavirus
How 3-D Printers Are Helping to Fight the Coronavirus

Across the United States, an ad-hoc corps of health-care workers, designers, engineers, and
fabricators have stepped into the breach.
By Sue Halpern
Medical Dispatch
The Challenges of Post-COVID-19 Care

Surviving a severe coronavirus infection is hard. So is recovering afterward.
By Dhruv Khullar
Annals of Obsession
How to Groom a World-Champion Beard In A Pandemic

M. J. Johnson, a four-time winner at the World Beard and Moustache Championships,
mastered his facial hair long before the “quarantine beard” flooded social media. Now, as an
emergency worker, he may be forced to shave off eight years of work.
A Reporter at Large
How Hospice Became a For-Profit Hustle

It began as a visionary notion—that patients could die with dignity at home. Now it’s a twenty-
two-billion-dollar industry plagued by exploitation.
By Ava Kofman
Cookies Settings

Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at The Same Time - The New Yorker

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at The Same Time - The New Yorker

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2/21/23, 9:45 AM Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at the Same Time?

| The New Yorker

Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect

aroline Buckee, a top epidemiologist at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of

Mint Velvet Whistles

None of the above NEXT

By presenting aggregated location data in an accessible and searchable format for

Digital technologies, which work at scale, instantly provide detailed information

As unlikely as it may seem that such privacy-compromising measures will be

As difficult as it is now to look ahead, lawmakers like Cantwell and privacy

A Guide to the Coronavirus

Your e-mail address

How 3-D Printers Are Helping to Fight the Coronavirus

The Challenges of Post-COVID-19 Care

How to Groom a World-Champion Beard In A Pandemic

How Hospice Became a For-Profit Hustle

You might also like