Preserving liberty while harnessing the power of data in the age of COVID-19

As COVID-19 spreads across the planet, humanity faces a difficult and deadly trial. Here in the U.S., the best science available predicts hundreds of thousands of Americans will contract the disease. Government officials have already reported that thousands of patients with COVID-19 have died and projected that between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans will eventually die from the virus.

Facing this grim diagnosis will bring out the best in the American people. Character is displayed under pressure. We're under pressure, and America's character is strong. We have the discipline and determination to do what is right for our families and communities, even when it is difficult. We have the caring and compassion to help those who are suffering. We have ingenious entrepreneurs and innovative tools – including the ability to gather and process large amounts of data.

And we have the wisdom to know that our character must guide how we use tools, including data-gathering tools, to help us overcome this monumental challenge.

Countries around the world are combatting the spread of coronavirus by collecting and using the location of peoples' smartphones. This government use of location data – i.e., surveillance – appears to be a powerful tool in the fight against the disease, but also raises a host of privacy concerns. The U.S. shouldn't blindly copy other countries' practices. Instead, we can and should find ways to harness the power of big data to protect public health while also protecting the rights of all Americans.

Governments use location data to combat COVID-19 in two ways. They use it for "contact tracing," to identify all the people a sick person has encountered. Most do this by assembling a massive database of the movements of every person, sick or healthy. South Korea has been especially aggressive on this front, collecting data from infected citizens' credit cards, GPS systems, and cellphones to determine their location and interactions with other citizens. Singapore has created an app that collects information about nearby phones over Bluetooth, focusing on who the user has been near, rather than where. No comprehensive database of locations is required.

The other purpose for which countries are using location data is to enforce social distancing or quarantine requirements. The South Korean government mandates that quarantined individuals download an app that tracks their location, enabling the government to detect when individuals break their quarantine restrictions. Governments in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Russia also use smartphone apps, geofencing, and facial-recognition technology to enforce quarantine restrictions on individuals.

While we don't have comprehensive data on the effectiveness of these various approaches, it does appear that digital surveillance can help governments "flatten the curve" and slow the spread of COVID-19.

But when governments use these tools, they do so at the cost of their citizens' privacy. This tradeoff is not surprising. Because information about people is useful for many purposes, tradeoffs between privacy and other values are common. Privacy values often clash with openness, competition, and innovation. But rarely are the tradeoffs so dramatic.

Calibrating these tradeoffs in advance is difficult. There is evidence that existing U.S. privacy laws hindered the use of valuable medical information, slowing the initial response to the virus. Specifically, university researchers in Washington state were delayed by weeks in their efforts to repurpose already-gathered patient data to study the growing COVID-19 pandemic. This is one reason laws that restrict private sector use of data should allow beneficial uses, including using data to improve health and save lives.

But even when fighting real, tangible harms like death and disease, unwarranted government surveillance without due process unacceptably threatens liberty. That's why our Constitution and our values limit what government can do even when pursuing important goals. These privacy-protecting institutions are our country's antibodies against government overreach and abuse.

Fortunately, we don't have to give up our liberties to use big data tools in the fight against COVID-19. Rather than assemble giant databases of personal information like South Korea or China has, U.S. government public health experts should use anonymized location data not linked to individuals. Such data can help researchers assess how well populations are practicing social distancing, identify hotspots of activity that raise the risk of spreading the disease, and study how the disease has spread. (Reports indicate that health officials are already using anonymized mobile advertising data for these purposes and some private companies are offering free-to-use tools to help decisionmakers). We should also explore decentralized approaches to contact tracing, like the Singaporean app. Civic-minded individuals who want to volunteer their data for research purposes should be encouraged to do so, perhaps through public education campaigns.

In any case, U.S. health officials must protect our privacy by ensuring that any data collected for use in this current health crisis isn't repurposed for other government uses. And both businesses and governments involved in this effort must tell the public how data is being collected, shared, and used.

The U.S. has the world's best innovators in using data to improve Americans' lives. We can, and should, empower those innovators to fight the spread of COVID-19 consistent with our strong American values and character.

This article originally appeared on Real Clear Defense. Follow @RCDefense on Twitter.