Professors Brian Ray (Director, Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law) and Jane Bambauer (University of Arizona) were recently invited to contribute the post “Privacy and Digital Contact Tracing” to Cornell Tech’s Critical Reflection’s blog. The post expands the argument that privacy critiques of digital contact tracing apps ignored long-standing public health norms, which they first developed in their article COVID-19 Apps Are Terrible: They Didn’t Have to Be.
The authors outline the early promise of contract tracing apps being developed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that proposed to repurpose a limited range of location information for use in understanding and combating the virus and its spread. The article explores ways in which concerns over privacy risks have resulted in apps that sacrifice efficacy, equity and possible benefits to public health.
To read the entire blog post, click here.