According to the CDC, “contact tracing, a core disease control measure employed by local and state health department personnel for decades, is a key strategy for preventing further spread of COVID-19.”
For example, it has been used to track STDs since the 70s. Historically, contract tracing was performed by trained persons who made contact with those who have been in close contact with an infected individual. Contact tracing adheres is HIPAA requirements and places a high priority on individual’s right to privacy.
In the current technology driven society, the CDC is evaluating tech tools that might support contract tracing but as of the bulletin posted by the CDC on 4/20/2020, they have not completed evaluation of tools and once this phase is completed, the CDC plans to launch a pilot for testing purposes.
Digital Contact Tracing Tools for COVID-19
Discover Magazine, a science magazine, published a story about how Contact Tracing apps will work in theory. As media begins to generate content on this topic according to various media bias, it is important to keep in mind that any technology development firm will have data privacy and security as a top concern for any app they might take to market.
In the time of data breaches that happen almost daily, an application that did not have data privacy and security controls in place would not be a competitive contender in this market. MIT is currently working to develop what they are calling Private Automated Contract Tracing (PACT). As someone who working in the Information Security sector, specifically in Compliance, I realize that when PII or HIPAA data is collected within a technology system or application, security controls must be built into the design to ensure private information is not accessible to anyone without cause. I’ve included a short video from MIT describing the framework of their design philosophy.
Don’t Get Taken in by Misinformation
Contract tracing though technology in the US is currently in development. If the current design is ever actually implemented it will not be something that is relevant to your phone number or app on your phone. It’s specific to the pings your phone transmits to show where you’ve been. This morning a popular news network had an “expert” on to discuss the topic. The expert was Wesley Smith who the news network promoted as “Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute” who the news anchor stated “has studied this topic at length.”
The “Discover Institute” is actually the Discover Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. The organization’s “What We Do” page says,
“We examine a constellation of related issues–including assisted suicide and euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human genetic manipulation, human cloning, radical environmentalism, the evil of human trafficking, and the animal rights movement—in order to educate policy and thought with an intellectual defense of the importance of being human as the predicate to universal human rights.”
If you follow a little deeper into Smith’s bio on the site, he’s done a great deal of work specific to euthanasia and animal rights but there is nothing about his expertise in pandemics or specifically contract tracing. This man is not an expert in this field.
I get tired of hearing the term “Fake News” but there is definitely always going to be a bit of media bias.
media-bias – (n.) a political bias in journalistic reporting, in programming selection, or otherwise mass communications media.
A good rule in the world we live in today is that if you hear something that scares you, dig deeper!