As part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide have deployed mobile phone surveillance programs to augment public health interventions. However, these programs raise privacy concerns. The authors of this report examine whether two goals can be achieved concurrently: the use of mobile phones as public health surveillance tools to help manage COVID 19 and future crises, and the protection of privacy and civil liberties.

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Data Privacy During Pandemics

A Scorecard Approach for Evaluating the Privacy Implications of COVID-19 Mobile Phone Surveillance Programs

by Benjamin Boudreaux, Matthew A. DeNardo, Sarah W. Denton, Ricardo Sanchez, Katie Feistel, Hardika Dayalani

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Research Questions

  1. How have governments worldwide used mobile phone surveillance programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
  2. What are the potential short-term privacy implications of these programs during the COVID 19 pandemic, and what are the potential long-term changes to health surveillance norms for which the technological infrastructure is being built and exercised?
  3. How can the privacy implications of these programs be evaluated and presented in a concise, standardized, and transparent manner?
  4. How can U.S. federal, state, and local officials use public health mobile phone surveillance programs in ways that protect privacy?

Public health officials around the world are struggling to respond to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To contain the highly infectious disease, governments have turned to mobile phone surveillance programs to augment traditional public health interventions. These programs have been designed to track COVID-19 symptoms, map population movement, trace the contacts of infected persons, enforce quarantine orders, and authorize movement through health passes. Although these programs enable more-robust public health interventions, they also raise concerns that the privacy and civil liberties of users will be violated.

In this report, the authors evaluate the short- and long-term privacy harms associated with the use of these programs—including political, economic, and social harms. They consider whether two potentially competing goals can be achieved concurrently: (1) the use of mobile phones as public health surveillance tools to help manage COVID 19 and future public health crises, and (2) the protection of privacy and civil liberties.

To evaluate the privacy implications of COVID-19 mobile surveillance programs, the authors create a concise, transparent, and standardized privacy scorecard. They use this scorecard approach to evaluate 40 mobile phone surveillance programs from around the world. The results indicate that the privacy implications vary considerably across programs, even within programs designed to accomplish similar public health goals. The authors offer recommendations to U.S. federal, state, and local officials to implement COVID-19 surveillance programs that better protect privacy, especially that of vulnerable and marginalized communities.

Key Findings

  • Governments worldwide have leveraged mobile phone surveillance to augment traditional public health interventions in response to COVID-19. These programs track COVID-19 symptoms, map population movement, trace contacts of infected persons, enforce quarantine orders, and authorize movement through health passes.
  • There is concern that, after the current public health crisis subsides, governments will be reluctant to relinquish the mobile phone surveillance programs that were deployed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, which could contribute to "surveillance creep."
  • There are privacy-related effects of these programs, including discrimination and abuse by governments, employers, insurance companies, and others; criminal fraud and identity theft; and social and reputational harms.
  • There are risks to vulnerable communities of both under-inclusion in health-enhancing mobile phone public health interventions, and over-inclusion in privacy-infringing programs.
  • The threat to privacy can negatively affect government accountability and public trust.
  • There is a need for a concise, standardized, and transparent privacy scorecard to evaluate and present the privacy implications of mobile surveillance programs.
  • The three privacy criteria with the most "not satisfied" scores across all categories of programs are (1) whether the program is open source, (2) whether the program has a sunset clause, and (3) whether there is a firewall against law enforcement access to the data.
  • Through the use of the scorecard, the research team found that there is considerable variance of the privacy implications across programs, even when those programs are designed to achieve similar goals.

Recommendations

  • The federal government could support state and local agencies' efforts to implement mobile phone surveillance programs by creating a registry of programs that includes scorecard-based information about privacy protections. Agencies could use this repository of information to support the selection of programs for use in their respective jurisdictions and to coordinate approaches.
  • The federal government can play a strong role in coordinating stakeholders across technology, public health, and privacy communities to ensure that the deployed programs serve the stated public health goals and incorporate strong privacy protections, including those identified in the privacy scorecard.
  • To further ensure that mobile phone surveillance programs have a narrow scope focused on public health goals, the federal government should clarify the authority under which federal agencies can use the collected data.
  • To clarify expectations for the tool, its developers, and its end-users, states should implement a scorecard-based approach to evaluating the privacy protections included in mobile phone–based public health surveillance programs. Although some trade-offs between usability and effectiveness might be unavoidable, many of the programs can address the desired public health objectives while still satisfying the privacy criteria.
  • In developing their strategies, state and local governments should consult with community stakeholders to ensure that programs are meeting local needs while also being sensitive to privacy and equity risks. It will be particularly important that those disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and those historically subject to extensive government surveillance have a central seat at the table in these consultations.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter One

    Introduction

  • Chapter Two

    Mobile Surveillance Programs in COVID-19 Response

  • Chapter Three

    Privacy Scoring for Mobile Surveillance Programs

  • Chapter Four

    Recommendations

  • Appendix A

    Privacy Scoring Methodology

  • Appendix B

    Mobile Phone Data Surveillance Program Scorecards

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