<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-container gmail-content-width3">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<font size="1"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/coronavirus-surveillance-tracking-privacy.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/coronavirus-surveillance-tracking-privacy.html</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">As Coronavirus Surveillance Escalates, Personal Privacy Plummets</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Natasha Singer and Choe Sang-Hun</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-line-height4 gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p id="gmail-article-summary"><b>Tracking entire populations to combat the pandemic now could open the doors to more invasive forms of government snooping later.</b></p><div><div height="630.2999877929688px" width="945px"><div><div width="945px" height="630.2999877929688px"><div><div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><span><span><span></span></span></span></div></div></div><div><ul><li><p>Published March 23, 2020Updated March 24, 2020<span></span></p></li></ul></div></div><div><div><p>In
South Korea, government agencies are harnessing surveillance-camera
footage, smartphone location data and credit card purchase records to
help<strong> </strong>trace the recent movements of coronavirus patients and establish virus transmission chains.</p><p>In Lombardy, Italy, the authorities are analyzing <a href="https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_marzo_17/coronavirus-gallera-in-lombardia-1640-decessi-16620-positivi-e3875744-686d-11ea-9725-c592292e4a85.shtml" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">location data transmitted by citizens’ mobile phones</a>
to determine how many people are obeying a government lockdown order
and the typical distances they move every day. About 40 percent are
moving around “too much,” an official recently said.</p><p>In Israel, the country’s internal security agency is poised to start <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-cellphone-tracking.html" title="">using a cache of mobile phone location data</a> — originally intended for counterterrorism operations — to try to pinpoint citizens who may have been exposed to the virus.</p><p>As
countries around the world race to contain the pandemic, many are
deploying digital surveillance tools as a means to exert social control,
even turning security agency technologies on their own civilians.
Health and law enforcement authorities are understandably eager to
employ every tool at their disposal to try to hinder the virus — even as
the surveillance efforts threaten to alter the precarious balance
between public safety and personal privacy on a global scale.</p></div></div><div><div><p>Yet
ratcheting up surveillance to combat the pandemic now could permanently
open the doors to more invasive forms of snooping later. It is a lesson
Americans learned after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, civil
liberties experts say.</p><p>Nearly two decades later, law enforcement
agencies have access to higher-powered surveillance systems, like
fine-grained location tracking and facial recognition — technologies
that may be repurposed to further political agendas <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/us/politics/ice-drivers-licenses-facial-recognition.html" title="">like anti-immigration policies</a>. Civil liberties experts warn that the public has little recourse to challenge these digital exercises of state power.</p><p>“We
could so easily end up in a situation where we empower local, state or
federal government to take measures in response to this pandemic that
fundamentally change the scope of American civil rights,” said Albert
Fox Cahn, the executive director of the <a href="https://www.stopspying.org/programs" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Surveillance Technology Oversight Project</a>, a nonprofit organization in Manhattan.</p><p>As an example, he pointed to <a href="https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2019/S7919" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a law</a>
enacted by New York State this month that gives Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo
unlimited authority to rule by executive order during state crises like
pandemics and hurricanes. The law allows him to issue emergency response
directives that could overrule any local regulations.</p></div></div><div><div height="0px" width="945px"><div><div width="945px" height="0px"><div><div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><span><span></span></span></div></div></div><div><div><p>This
month, Australia’s health minister publicly chastised a doctor whom she
accused of treating patients while experiencing symptoms of the virus —
essentially outing him by naming the small clinic in Victoria where he
worked with a handful of other physicians.</p><p>The health provider, who tested positive for the coronavirus, responded with <a href="https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/cheap-opportunity-infected-melbourne-doctor-slams-inaccurate-unfair-reports-c-734674" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a Facebook post</a> saying the minister had incorrectly characterized his actions for political gain and demanded an apology.</p><p>“That
could extend to anyone, to suddenly have the status of your health
blasted out to thousands or potentially millions of people,” said Chris
Gilliard, an independent privacy scholar based in the Detroit area.
“It’s a very strange thing to do because, in the alleged interest of
public health, you are actually endangering people.”</p><p>But in
emergencies like pandemics, privacy must be weighed against other
considerations, like saving lives, said Mila Romanoff, data and
governance lead for <a href="https://www.unglobalpulse.org/about/" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">United Nations Global Pulse</a>, a U.N. program that has studied using data to improve emergency responses to epidemics like Ebola and dengue fever.</p><p>“We
need to have a framework that would allow companies and public
authorities to cooperate, to enable proper response for the public
good,” Ms. Romanoff said. To reduce the risk that coronavirus
surveillance efforts might violate people’s privacy, she said,
governments and companies should limit the collection and use of data to
only what is needed. “The challenge is,” she added, “how much data is
enough?”</p></div></div><div><div height="257.7833251953125px" width="600px"><div><div width="600px" height="257.7833251953125px"><div><div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><p>The
fast pace of the pandemic, however, is prompting governments to put in
place a patchwork of digital surveillance measures in the name of their
own interests, with little international coordination on how appropriate
or effective they are.</p><p>In hundreds of cities in China, the government is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/business/china-coronavirus-surveillance.html" title="">requiring citizens to use software</a>
on their phones that automatically classifies each person with a color
code — red, yellow or green — indicating contagion risk. The software
determines which people should be quarantined or permitted to enter
public places like subways. But officials have not explained how the
system makes such decisions, and citizens have felt powerless to
challenge it.</p><p>In Singapore, the Ministry of Health has posted
information online about each coronavirus patient, often in stunning
detail, including relationships to other patients. The idea is to warn
individuals who may have crossed paths with them, as well as alert the
public to potentially infected locations. “Case 219 is a 30-year-old
male,” says one entry <a href="https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/four-more-cases-discharged-seventeen-new-cases-of-covid-19-infection-confirmed" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">on the Health Ministry’s site</a>,
who worked at the “Sengkang Fire Station (50 Buangkok Drive),” is “in
an isolation room at Sengkang General Hospital” and “is a family member
of Case 236.”</p></div></div><div><div height="257.7833251953125px" width="600px"><div><div width="600px" height="257.7833251953125px"><div><div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><span><span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><p>On
Friday, Singapore also introduced a smartphone app for citizens to help
the authorities locate people who may have been exposed to the virus.
The app, called <a href="https://www.tracetogether.gov.sg/" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TraceTogether</a>,
uses Bluetooth signals to detect mobile phones that are nearby. If an
app user later tests positive for the virus, the health authorities may
examine the data logs from the app to find people who crossed their
paths. A government official said the app preserved privacy by not
revealing users’ identities to one another.</p><p>In Mexico, after public health officials notified Uber about a passenger infected with the virus, <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/02/04/uber-suspends-hundreds-of-accounts-after-coronavirus-patient-takes-rides-in-mexico/" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the company suspended the accounts</a> of two drivers who had given him rides, along with more than 200 passengers who had ridden with those drivers.</p><p>In
the United States, the White House recently spoke with Google, Facebook
and other tech companies about potentially using aggregated location
data captured from Americans’ mobile phones for public health
surveillance of the virus. Several members of Congress subsequently
wrote <a href="https://eshoo.house.gov/sites/eshoo.house.gov/files/documents/Eshoo-Wyden-DelBene%20-%20Letter%20to%20Pres%20%26%20VP%20about%20coronavirus%20privacy%20-%203.19.20.pdf" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a letter urging President Trump</a> and Vice President Mike Pence to protect any virus-related data that companies collected from Americans.</p></div></div><div><div><p>The
digital dictates may enable governments to exert more social control
and enforce social distancing during the pandemic. They also raise
questions about when surveillance may go too far.</p><p>In January,
South Korean authorities began posting detailed location histories on
each person who tested positive for the coronavirus. The site has
included a wealth of information — such as details about when people
left for work, whether they wore masks in the subway, the name of the
stations where they changed trains, the massage parlors and karaoke bars
they frequented and the names of the clinics where they were tested for
the virus.</p><p>In South Korea’s highly wired society, however,
internet mobs exploited patient data disclosed by the government site to
identify people by name and hound them.</p></div></div><div><div height="257.7833251953125px" width="600px"><div><div width="600px" height="257.7833251953125px"><div><div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><p>As
other countries increase surveillance, South Korea had an unusual
reaction. Concerned that privacy invasions might discourage citizens
from getting tested for the virus, health officials announced this month
that they would refine their data-sharing guidelines to minimize
patient risk.</p><p>“We will balance the value of protecting individual
human rights and privacy and the value of upholding public interest in
preventing mass infections,” said Jung Eun-kyeong, the director of South
Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p><p>That is a tricky balance that some United States officials may need to consider.</p></div></div><div><div><p>In New York this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200303223818/http:/twitter.com/nycmayor/status/1234968701700595712" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> posted details on Twitter</a>
about a lawyer in Westchester County who was the second person in the
state to test positive for the virus — including the name of the man’s
seven-person law firm and the names of the schools attended by two of
his children. A few hours later, The <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/03/03/nyc-lawyer-with-coronavirus-in-severe-condition-health-department/" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">New York Post identified the lawyer</a> by name and was soon referring to him as “patient zero” in the coronavirus outbreak in New Rochelle.</p><p>In a response <a href="https://www.facebook.com/adina.garbuz/posts/10218749730509115" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">posted on Facebook</a>,
Adina Lewis Garbuz, a lawyer who is the wife of the man, Lawrence
Garbuz, pleaded with the public to focus instead on the personal efforts
the family had made to isolate themselves and notify people who came
into contact with them.</p><p>“We would have preferred this all remain
private,” Ms. Garbuz wrote in the Facebook post, “but since it is no
longer, I wanted to at least share some truths and allay people’s
fears.”</p><p><br></p><p>Natasha Singer reported from New York, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul. Aaron Krolik and Adam Satariano contributed research.</p></div></div><div><div><div><p>Natasha Singer is a business reporter covering health technology, education technology and consumer privacy. <span> <a href="https://twitter.com/natashanyt" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span>@</span>natashanyt</a> </span></p></div><div><p>Choe Sang-Hun is the Seoul bureau chief for The New York Times, focusing on news on North and South Korea. <span> </span></p></div></div></div><br></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>