Let Freedom Ring: State Governments That Want to Track You by Your ...

The pandemic is a gift that keeps on giving to Big Tech companies and other businesses already benefiting from “Surveillance Capitalism.”
Some state governments now want to implement “contact tracing” apps on
smartphones. Other countries are already doing this. They say it’s all
about protecting us and our loved ones from getting sick. They’re also
hiring people to call the infected and ask them about where they’ve
been and who’ve they’ve been with. Creeped out yet?

More from Pew Trusts:

When Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat,
suggested recently that the state might use residents’ cellphone data to
trace the spread of the coronavirus, opponents on both the left and
right were aghast.

The American Civil Liberties Union raised the specter of an intrusive
government prying into people’s personal lives. Republican state
lawmakers drafted a letter imploring the governor “not to attempt to
track personally-identifiable cellular phone location data, absent
specific user consent or a judicial warrant.”

Several other states, including Colorado, North Dakota and Utah, are
considering voluntary cellphone tracking as a step toward reopening
their economies. Other countries, including China, Israel and Singapore,
have used cellphone data for contact tracing

There also is a low-tech strategy for tracking the virus: calling
people who are infected and asking them about their movements and
encounters with others. Arkansas, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Rhode
Island and Washington are among the states employing it.

“Voluntary systems sometimes get turned into involuntary systems.” – Blake Filippi, Republican minority leader Rhode Island House

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said Wednesday he was looking
to build a “tracing army,” with the help of neighboring New Jersey and
Connecticut and a financial contribution of at least $10 million from
former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.

But Cuomo noted that New York would need thousands of investigators
to make the system effective. And the information gleaned from personal
interviews is based on sometimes faulty memories.

Contact tracing via cellphone doesn’t have those shortcomings, but it does raise privacy concerns.

The ACLU, in a recent white paper,
cautioned that any system using cellphone data must be voluntary,
encrypted, time-limited with a specific end point to the data
collection, and conscious of the “rights of privacy and free
association.”

The ACLU said technology-assisted contact tracing or TACT “is useful
only if those who learn of possible exposures to COVID are able to do
something about it: get tested, get counseling, get treatment, or take
measures like self-isolation. The lack of adequate and equitable social
and public health support systems would limit the effectiveness of any
TACT system — potentially risking people’s privacy without bringing them
benefits.”

Raimondo has said Rhode Island’s cellphone tracking would be opt-in, meaning cellphone owners would have to agree to be tracked.

“The State is developing an app that would allow for real-time
monitoring of symptoms and would assist our contact tracing efforts in
order to contain the spread and help prevent future outbreaks,” Raimondo
press secretary Josh Block said in an email. “This app will operate on
an opt-in basis, meaning no data will be collected without the user’s
consent.”

But that’s not reassuring enough for some.

“Every American should have been concerned about privacy even before
coronavirus,” said Rhode Island House Minority Leader Blake Filippi, a
Republican who spearheaded the letter to Raimondo. “Voluntary systems
sometimes get turned into involuntary systems. If it’s true it’s going
to be voluntary, it’s a waste of resources. No one is going to be
voluntarily tracked.”

In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, issued a stay-at-home order on March 25 and set up a voluntary system
to track people with symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. People who are
feeling sick can fill out an online form and provide cellphone
information that allows the state to record their GPS data. Health
officials can follow up with them.

Earlier, the state had used metadata gathered anonymously from phones
to pinpoint areas where people were heeding stay-at-home orders.

And North Dakota rolled out a new app, Care19, that allows phone users to record their own movements. Other states are expected to follow.

Kansas is among several states using cellphone data to see where
people are obeying stay-at-home orders — and where they are not. The
Kansas Department of Health and Environment is using a dashboard from
Unacast, a location data and analytics firm, that compiles phone GPS
data.

That data is anonymous but can give officials an idea of areas where
large numbers of people may not be heeding stay-at-home laws. The data
led state officials to ramp up their pleas for people to stay at home.

Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle, a Republican, questioned the use of the data and asked
state officials to provide all records of the state’s “use of a
third-party data collection program (such as Unacast) to track the
movement of individuals through their cell phone data.”

Apple and Google announced they are developing an app that would use
Bluetooth to trace smartphone users’ proximity to other users. The app
will be designed to work with apps run by public health authorities. The
functions will require users to opt in, the companies said. White House
officials are in talks with the companies about how the data would be
used.

Even health experts acknowledge that cellphone tracing, while effective, raises privacy concerns.

On Snapchat’s “Good Luck America,”
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task
force, said privacy under such circumstances creates “sticky issues.”

“You know, you could look at somebody’s cellphone, and say, ‘You were
next to these 25 people over the last 24 hours,’” Fauci said. “Boy, I
gotta tell you, the civil liberties-type pushback on that would be
considerable. Even though from a purely public health standpoint, that
makes sense.”

A Pew Research Center survey
this month found more than half of adults said it was at least
“somewhat acceptable” for the government to track the cellphones of
people who tested positive for the coronavirus. Some 45% said it was
acceptable for the government to track people who may have had contact
with someone who tested positive.

But the survey found less support for monitoring smartphones to make
sure people are following social distancing guidelines, at 37%.

And 60% of the more than 4,900 U.S. adults Pew surveyed said tracking
people by cellphone wouldn’t help stop the spread of the virus, while
just 38% thought it would. (The Pew Charitable Trusts funds both the
Center and Stateline.)

Americans should be aware that the vast majority of the cellphones
they carry already have GPS applications that keep track of where the
phone owners have been, said Greg Kelley, chief technology officer of
Vestige, a digital forensic and cybersecurity company headquartered in
Cleveland.

That capability can be disabled, he said, but most users don’t do
that. “Even when you disable it, I’ve seen instances where it’s still
stored on the phone,” he said in a phone interview. “I was able to tell
when this individual got up in the morning, went to school … where he
went in the school, when he came back home, went to a restaurant, and
home again.”

It wouldn’t take much for software companies to make that data
available to outside entities, he said. “That’s where you get into civil
liberties,” he said, adding that opt-in apps would address some of the
concerns.

He noted that China has started requiring an app on phones that
lights up with a specific color when the owner has been cleared to
engage in certain activities, such as riding the subway. That might be
problematic in this country, however.

Juliette Kayyem, senior lecturer in international
security at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said for the next
two years or so, the nation may have to place a greater emphasis “on
societal needs than individual privacy rights.”

“Much like rules require vaccination to enjoy certain privileges
(like public school) we will get a version of that,” she said in an
email. “If you want your total privacy, then you will lose privileges.”

In regard to Dr. Fauci’s statement, “Even though from a purely public health standpoint, (cell phone tracing) makes sense.”

Actually – it doesn’t make sense AT ALL. Smartphones emit Electromagnetic Radiation aka “Electrosmog” (see 1, 2, 3) and exposure to “Electrosmog” isn’t good for our health. It can even reduce our immunity to illnesses – including “the most dreaded” – in humans and our pets.

Activist Post Recommended Book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

5G, Bluetooth, cell phone and WiFi radiation (see 1, 2, 3) are all sources of “Electrosmog.” So the health cost of cellphone tracing and other wirelessly operated surveillance methods may actually outweigh the benefits. In fact, health experts including the World Health Organization have warned for many years that we should be reducing our exposure to wireless, not increasing it.

Therefore, frying us to spy on us doesn’t seem to be the most effective way to defeat “The Invisible Enemy” or any other health epidemic. Plus it’s creepy.