Big data is helping us fight the coronavirus—but at what cost to our privacy?
. “There isn’t necessarily coherence in terms of states’ laws. There isn’t any coherence vis-a-vis state and federal law in this domain.”
But Goodwin stressed the need to maintain individual protections even in the face of an extraordinary crisis. “Our civil liberties don’t just simply go away because there is a virus that is afoot that might affect many people,” she said. “You don’t lose your civil liberties simply because there is something in the air. You don’t lose your civil liberties simply because you become sick. It’s important to understand the primacy of due process.
So what does a policy that balances data privacy and the public good look like? “We ask three questions about proposals to use data about people in new ways in response to COVID-19,” Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney for the, told me over email. “Would it be effective? Would it excessively intrude on our liberties? Are there sufficient safeguards?”
“Some proposals would not be effective — e.g., use of cell-site location information for contact tracing, because it is not sufficiently granular to place two people close enough together to transmit the disease,” Schwartz wrote. “Some proposals would excessively intrude on our liberties — e.g., China’s compulsion that every resident download a tracking app.
Because the coronavirus has been so difficult to stop, it’s tempting to fight it by whatever means are available — and there’s a case to be made for that, at least temporarily. (After all, the whole concept of
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