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ACLU warns that contact tracking applications designed to monitor the spread of COVID-19 could have ‘significant’ privacy risks if they lack adequate safeguards
- ACLU says contact tracking applications should be done with privacy in mind
- He said apps could have significant privacy risks if they aren’t properly designed
- Among other things, the ACLU recommends more robust privacy controls.
- Learn more about how to help people affected by COVID
In a white paper published by the American Civil Liberties Union, the watchdog agency warns that apps that purport to track the spread of COVID-19 could have significant privacy risks.
While the ACLU does not expressly oppose applications that use data from people’s phones to track the spread of the virus, the organization says in its notice that implementation will require a higher level of user consent, especially when it’s about how your data is shared.
ACLU says contact tracking apps could carry ‘significant’ privacy risks if not designed with robust controls over security and consent (stock)
“While some of these systems may offer public health benefits, they can also cause significant risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” writes Jennifer Stisa Granick, an ACLU surveillance and cybersecurity attorney, in a publication of Blog.
“If such systems are going to work, there should be widespread, free and rapid tests available.”
The ACLU cautions that ‘voluntariness’ should be an integral part of any contact tracking system, otherwise users may reject its implementation entirely by disabling their location data.
‘Systems must also be widely adopted, but that will not happen if people do not trust them. For trust, the tool must protect privacy, be voluntary, and store data on an individual’s device rather than in a centralized repository, “wrote the ACLU.
According to the organization, proposals to follow up on contacts such as those recently put forward jointly by Google and Apple should also have express conditions on how the data can be used.
For example, a law dictating that collected data will not be used for advertising purposes, in addition to limits on how long governments can keep data.
Researchers have warned that an NHS contact tracking app would only completely stop the spread of the coronavirus if 80 percent of current smartphone owners use it.
The ACLU also questioned whether the data could be used for surveillance purposes and submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for Google matches. and Apple.
The ACLU’s guidance on contact tracking comes immediately after an initiative by Google and Apple, which partnered to support governments and health authorities in developing their own contact tracking applications.
Specifically, companies are providing governments and health agencies with access to their application programming interfaces (APIs) so that they can interact with Google and Apple databases to develop their own contact tracking applications.
