The New Scarlet Letter

By Kim Bellard, March 26, 2020

If you live in one of the jurisdictions that have imposed stay-at-home requirements, you’re probably making your essential excursions — grocery store, pharmacy, even walks — with a wary eye towards anyone you come across. Do they have COVID-19? Have they been in contact with anyone who has? Are they keeping at least the recommended six feet away from you? In short, who is putting you at risk?

Well, of course, this being the 21st century, we’re turning to our smartphones to help us try to answer these questions. What this may lead to remains to be seen.

Last week Israel granted its domestic security agency emergency powers to track the mobile phone data of people who have (or may have) coronavirus. The intent is for the health ministry to track whether such persons are adhering to quarantine rules, and possibly to alert others who had previously come in contact with them.

China is using the AliPay Health Code to assign color codes to individuals based on their known health status — green, yellow, red. The system is used in real time to determine, for example, who can board mass transit or use public housing. It is being rolled out nationwide, despite the lack of transparency about how the codes are determined, used, or updated.

Singapore has developed a tool — TraceTogether — that uses Bluetooth to track whose phones have been in close contact, and for how long. If someone then tests positive for COVID-19, the health ministry can easily determine who has been in contact with them.

South Korea is using smartphone data to create a publicly available map of movements of known coronavirus patients, and aggressively message those who might have come in contact with them.

Unfortunately, the information about their movements is having significant ripple effects, disclosing destinations users might have preferred not be public, or attaching a stigma to places they frequented.

In the U.S., volunteers from several big tech companies built covidnearyou, which allows people to self-report such facts as any symptoms, travel history, or exposure to people who have tested positive. Anyone can then use their map to determine if there are affected individuals near them.

MIT’s Media Lab has developed Private Kit: Safe Paths, “An app that tracks where you have been and who you have crossed paths with — and then shares this personal data with other users in a privacy-preserving way.” Unlike efforts in some other countries, the data is encrypted and does not go through a central authority. MIT Technology Review says:

Going one step further, two San Francisco hospitals have developed a smart ring that is “able to detect body temperature and pulse.” It is aimed at health care professionals and workers, such as ER doctors, as an early indicator of COVID-19 exposure. It’s probably only a matter of time before laypersons demand a version.

One can easily imagine such a smart ring being connected to a smartphone app, perhaps even generating a color code, and broadcasting the individual’s status and location to others worried about potential exposure. I bet Alibaba would be happy to help.

Tagging people and then broadcasting that tag, along with location and even identity, could put people at risk of discrimination (e.g., refused service or contact) and even attacks.

And we need to bear in mind that whatever technology we bring to bear on this public health problem could subsequently be used for other problems, public health or other. We increasingly live in a surveillance society, and that can be to our benefit — or to our detriment. We don’t always realize the slippery slope we’re on until the slide has become irreversible.

I’m all for using technology to address public health crises. I’m just not clear what the ultimate price we’re going to have to pay for that, and that makes me nervous.

This post is an abridged version of the original posting in Medium. Please follow Kim on Medium and on Twitter (@kimbbellard)