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/1 Last weekend, Minnesota's public safety commissioner likened the investigation of protesters to contact tracing.
In @just_security, @deblebrown and I explain that this analogy speaks volumes about the abusive potential of #COVID19 tracking apps:https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/04/how-digital-contact-tracing-covid-19-could-worsen-inequality …
/2 Governments and companies have claimed that contact tracing apps are a potential game changer in this pandemic. However, when faced with questions about their effectiveness, they are quick to say it's not a magic bullet, and that anything helps.
3/ But we haven't seen any evidence of its necessity. For a technology with allegedly significant public health import, there have been few, if any trials or testing to back up claims of their usefulness. The "testing" seems to be: release it into the wild and see if it works.
4/ If anything, the evidence shows that these apps won't help communities that are hardest hit by the pandemic. Many researchers and journalists have written about the potential adoption obstacles. See e.g. https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/contact-tracing-apps-face-serious-adoption-obstacles/ …https://www.ft.com/content/21e438a6-32f2-43b9-b843-61b819a427aa …
5 / Our research also found that marginalized groups, from migrant workers to unhoused people, don't enjoy individualized and stable smartphone access - a key assumption baked into the design of most #COVID19 tracking apps.
6 / This raises structural questions about #COVID19 (and indeed all) tech design: who is designing tech, and for whom?
Susan Landau, @Christy_E_Lopez and @lauramoy's @lawfareblog piece on the inequities of digital contact tracing is a must-read:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/importance-equity-contact-tracing …
6/ It's one thing if contact tracing apps were simply a case of harmless do-something-ism. But it's quite another when it seeds a techno-solutionist narrative with harmful consequences for those whom experience surveillance as their daily reality.
7/ Privacy safeguards are a step in the right direction. So is regulatory oversight. But activists we spoke to in countries where both are a fantasy worry that governments will hijack the digital contact tracing narrative to enact intrusive surveillance in public health disguise.
8 / Privacy safeguards *for* #COVID19 apps also do not fix longstanding privacy disparities, such as leaky cheap smartphones (see @privacyint report on this), digital literacy gaps, and unstable internet access preventing regular security updates.
https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3226/buying-smart-phone-cheap-privacy-might-be-price-you-have-pay …
9/ It would also be naive to reduce a key condition of app adoption - public trust that the app does what it says and protects privacy - to what privacy safeguards exist. And this brings us back to the Minnesota public safety commissioner.
10/ Thoughtful app design and regulation will mitigate but not overcome fear and suspicion of the surveillance industrial complex that has fueled decades of government abuse and overreach - as exemplified by the ongoing police crackdown on #BlackLivesMatter
.
11/ Building public trust in how govs use tech, during the #COVID19 pandemic and beyond, will require going back to basics: expanding access to accurate testing, and access to adequate water, housing, sanitation and healthcare, esp for the poorest and most vulnerable people. /END
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