Over half of Americans think it’s acceptable for the government to track the cell phones of people with coronavirus, according to a new poll.
The poll found 52% of the U.S. says it’s “somewhat acceptable” for government to track the phones of people who’ve tested positive for covid-19 to better understand how the virus spreads, the Pew Research Center says. The remaining 48% of Americans responded that this would be unacceptable, the poll found.
Asked whether it’s acceptable for the government to track the location of people in contact with an infected person, 45% believed it was acceptable while 54% found it unacceptable.
“Pitting trade-offs between data collection for public good against privacy concerns has emerged as an issue in the coronavirus pandemic,” the Pew Research Center said.
Data companies already are offering “anonymized” cell phone GPS data to governments, which they say can’t be traced back to individual users. Researchers at MIT are creating Bluetooth technology that “chirps” when users get close to people with coronavirus. And, of course, Apple and Google are teaming up to create a system that can alert people if they’ve been in contact with someone diagnosed with covid-19.
This type of tracking — whether it uses cell phone data or not — will be important to reopening the U.S., experts say. Public health officials say contact tracing, which government uses to track who has the virus or may get it, is key to preventing another wave of cases as Americans return to work and school.
Already, governments in other countries are using a combination of medical records, cell phone GPS data, credit card transactions, closed-circuit television and Bluetooth technology to track citizens, according to Johns Hopkins University.
But most Americans are skeptical that tracking a person’s location with cell phone data will help curb the outbreak, according to Pew Research Center. The poll found about 60% don’t believe this will make a significant difference. About 38% thought it would help a lot, or at least a little.
