Cellphone tracking - whether through geolocation or something like detecting the proximity of bluetooth devices - has been getting a lot of attention for its potential to improve COVID surveillance. Given that there are estimates that a workforce of upwards of 100,000 people would be necessary to get a good contact-tracing regime going in the U.S., any automated way to reduce this would be welcome. Apple and Google have announced that they are developing an App for that. It would enable a user to know if they had been within six feet or so of someone who tested positive for COVID. Assume for the moment that enough people get tested that such a strategy would generate meaningful data, what are its limitations? Here are 5 concerns. Not surprisingly, they echo concerns about other uses of cellphone tracking: not just privacy invasion, but whether they actually generate a lot of false positives (the person in the apartment next to yours might well be within 6 feet of you), whether they promote discrimination (neighborhood hotspots, etc.), and so on.
The EFF has some useful principles here.
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