- The Singaporean government introduced a contact-tracing app named TraceTogether that mainly uses Bluetooth to keep a 21-day log of who users have been in close contact with. Singapore placed many privacy protections in the app. For example, it does not automatically report users names or locations. Upon governmental request, however, this information must be divulged. (CNBC)
- PRG’s own Albert Fox Cahn co-wrote an op-ed in NBC Think, commenting on some of the emerging concerns around surveillance and the pandemic response. The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (“STOP”) has seen calls for CSLI on a broad base, which would raise a lot of legal concern post-Carpenter. Also, there have been many calls for app-based data collection to enforce quarantine. New York’s Governor Cuomo announced today that he’s recruiting individuals for a technology SWAT team to be deployed over the coming 90 days, but it’s unclear what the scope of operations would be. The Senate bill has $1.5B set aside for local funding of surveillance, but it’s unclear whether that’s cabined to epidemiological surveillance or not. Overall, there seems to be the potential for a concerning pivot toward increased surveillance. (NBC Think)
- Lawfare and Just Security have posted some helpful articles on the intersection of pandemic response and privacy.
- Quite early in its pandemic response, the Israeli government passed a new law to allow its equivalent of the FBI to apply some measures to hack into people’s phones to find out other people who were physically proximate. Those who had contact with infected individuals would get a text from the ministry of health informing them of their contact and that they need to self-quarantine. (Techcrunch; Washington Post) But the system may not be working well, as many ER technicians and doctors have been getting these messages; there seems to be no differentiation. There was a Supreme Court injunction against the practice.
- Some, including the team behind Proton Mail, have noticed that increasingly popular web meeting client Zoom is an extremely “grabby” data collector and has a suite of surveillance features that can do things such as track user attention. (Protonmail)
(Compiled by Student Fellow Tom McBrien)