March 12 was a Thursday and the last day I was in the office, 60 State Street, 11th floor, Boston. There was a luncheon meeting for Preti Strategies staff I attended that day.
Before the meeting, I went to the rest room, a facility shared by all males who work on the floor. In the corridor, I encountered someone I know only by sight, a man leaving another office. I said hello as we passed each other.
He said, "They're shutting us down. The office is closing."
"Really?" I said.
"Yeah. Someone who visited our office earlier in the week tested positive for the virus."
That's when it hit: the coronavirus is more than a theoretical danger to me and my family.
Working remotely was the main topic of our staff meeting. As the discussion went on, an unspoken understanding that we would not be coming into the office for a while took hold, but no specific directive to that effect was issued. Over the weekend, however, we all received an email from Preti HQ in Portland announcing that normal operations within the Boston office would cease until further notice.
In an alternative world, a place where the president took the threat of a pandemic seriously at an early stage and where the U.S. had established -- through duly enacted federal laws and regulations -- an option to use digital geo-tracking in dire emergencies, an alert could have been sent on the afternoon of March 12 to the cell phones of everyone working at 60 State Street and to everyone who had visited the building on the same day the person with coronavirus did. The alert would have informed recipients of their potential exposure to a carrier of the disease, and -- continuing in that alternative world I am conjuring -- it would have encouraged them to be tested for the disease as soon as possible and to isolate themselves while awaiting the results. (Here, we may assume the widespread availability of testing services and of laboratories capable of producing test results in 12 hours or less.)
Next time there's a pandemic, maybe we'll have in place in the U.S. a digital geo-tracking system to throw at it. Unlikely. But possible. Let us hope.
Although it would be as simple for the U.S. as adopting a system like the one South Korea used to significant effect against the coronavirus just a few weeks ago, digital geo-tracking is bound to be a hard sell in the USA, even though our nation is tottering on the edge of an economic chasm as wide and deep as existed in the Great Depression. [Update: As of April 14, the corona virus mortality rate in the U.S. was 80 deaths per million residents, whereas the mortality rate in Korea was 4 deaths per million.]
Americans seem to have an inherent distrust of central authority and governmental power. And no one ever talks of weakening the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which proclaims, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."
We love our smartphones even as we worry that their smartness could be turned against us by corporations, marketing gurus, law enforcement agencies, prying bureaucrats, et al. The worriers can be found everywhere, including in the highest elective offices.
On April 7, for example, our state's junior U.S. Senator, Edward J. Markey, and a Senate colleague from Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, sent a letter to the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, expressing concerns about the company's new COVID-19 Mobility Reports.
These reports, as Google states, aim "to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combatting COVID-19." It's referring here to changes in travel patterns recorded by location-tracking features on smartphones, shared voluntarily by smartphone users with Google, and agglomerated in company mobility reports.
In their letter to Sundar Pichai, Senators Markey and Blumenthal said, "The potential consequences of misusing or inappropriately accessing individuals' personal information are particularly serious when location data is involved. An individual's location data can reveal other sensitive information, such as place of employment, religious affiliation, or political preferences. Access to this type of information can pose risks to both individuals' civil liberties and their physical safety. No one should fear that their phone is monitoring their every step...we caution you against steps that risk undermining your users' privacy."
I wonder what kind of letter Markey and Blumenthal may write in response to the news yesterday that Google and Apple are teaming up to "contact trace" the ongoing spread of the coronavirus, ("Apple and Google Are Building a Virus Tracking Tool for Phones," New York Times, 4-10-20). Yes, they'll actually be incorporating some kind of contact tracing tool in new iPhones and Android devices!
Technology is value-neutral. Its use or abuse is entirely within the control of rational human beings. If we decided that digital geo-tracking is a tool needed to protect ourselves from deadly plagues, save our economy, and preserve our way of life, we could create laws governing its use and guarding against its misuse. We could, for example, require that digital geo-tracking could be used only under the authorization and guidance of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and that federal, state and local law enforcement agencies may never gain access to data generated by such tracking. Further, we could require that all data be anonymized and automatically destroyed (erased) after two weeks. And we could take the simple step of regularly reminding smartphone users that they are able to turn off and turn on locator-tracking features on their devices at any time of their choosing.
No doubt, there are hundreds of things we could do to ensure the proper use of digital geo-tracking -- and we should begin moving down that road now, starting by enlisting the best engineers, physicians, lawyers and judges to serve on a commission drafting digital geo-tracking guidelines and procedures consistent with Fourth Amendment protections.
Now, let's return to that alternative world, a warming world, a place where, only several years from now, a viral agent is released from Alaska's thawing permafrost and makes its way to nearby rivers and streams, from which caribou drink. The virus has barely noticeable effects on the animals. One day a party of seven hunters arrives on scene, taken there by local guides who charge handsomely for their services. The hunters are friends: each holds a good-paying managerial or executive position at a large, Chicago-based corporation. In the first volley of shots, two caribou are killed and the rest scatter. The hunters return to their wilderness camp and that night feast on caribou steaks. The next morning they start for home. Two weeks later, all seven are seriously ill and two die from respiratory failure within a few days of entering hospitals. Unfortunately, during the 10-plus days the returned hunters were asymptomatic, they passed the infection to their family members, friends, co-workers and countless strangers on sidewalks, subways, elevators, coffee shops and restaurants. One month after the hunters have returned to Chicago, an epidemic of the new arctic virus is gathering steam in the upper Midwest and pockets of the virus are erupting in almost every city in the U.S. and abroad with flight connections to Chicago. Everywhere the disease has taken hold, roughly 10 percent of the afflicted die. One-by-one, every state imposes self-quarantine measures on its citizens. The economy slows to a crawl. Fear tightens its grip daily on the American people.
If something like this happened, I believe the president, exercising her emergency powers, would mandate the expedited use of digital geo-tracking to contact-trace every person possibly infected with the Arctic virus in order to get the disease under control. Any objections based on invasion of privacy concerns would be given short shrift by the president, the congress and the courts. Overnight polls would reveal that 83% of the population strongly favors digital geo-tracking.
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