A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAy, MARCH 19 , 2020
the coronavirus outbreak
BY TONY ROMMA coronavirus screening ser-
vice launched by Google’s sister
company this week is raising red
flags on Capitol Hill, where five
senior Senate Democrats are
questioning whether the tech gi-
ant is properly safeguarding pa-
tients’ data.
Lawmakers’ concerns center
on the tech giant’s new tool that
allows people in the San Francis-
co Bay area to input their symp-
toms, and, if they show signs of
the coronavirus, obtain testing.
Verily, the health subsidiary of
Google’s parent company, Alpha-
bet, unveiled the portal Monday
after President Trump touted it
days earlier.
But congressional Democrats
including S ens. Robert Menendez
and Cory Booker of New Jersey
and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.)
say it isn’t clear what Google
plans to do with the data it col-
lects — and whether information
the company obtains, or possibly
harnesses from users’ browsing
habits, might be used for purpos-
es that people might not expect.
To that end, lawmakers asked
Google as well as the Trump
administration in letters Wednes-
day to explain the privacy protec-
tions in place and how Google’s
effort would be monitored going
forward.
“We are concerned that neither
the [Trump] administration nor
Google has fully contemplated
the range of threats to Americans’
personally identifiable informa-
tion,” lawmakers wrote.
Google did not respond to a
request for comment. Verily,
which is operating the service,
reiterated in a blog post Wednes-
day that it is the entity collecting
data, not Google, and informa-
tion from the two is not linked.
“We do not combine this data
with an individual’s Google ac-
count, and were we to ever wish
to do so, individuals would need
to provide separate and explicit
consent,” Verily said.
The White House also did notimmediately respond. Sens. Rich-
ard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Sher-
rod Brown (Ohio) also signed the
letter.
As soon as Google announced
the coronavirus-screening ser-
vice, it found itself mired in politi-
cal controversy: The site differed
in key ways from the service that
Trump initially previewed public-
ly, leading to a behind-the-scenes
scramble by Google leaders to
match their visions before unveil-
ing their covid-19 screener,
named after the disease coronavi-
rus causes.
To use the service, patients
have to create or log into their
Google accounts and answer key
questions about their symptoms
and general health.
In handling that information,
Verily pledges on its site it is
“committed to maintaining high
privacy standards and keeping
your data safe.” Troubling watch-
dogs and regulators, however, is
language elsewhere indicating
data collected by the company
may be “shared with certain ser-
vice providers engaged to per-
form services on behalf of Verily,
including Google,” for a range of
purposes.
Senate Democrats asked
Google to elaborate on what will
happen to data collected through
the service — including whether
it will be sold or used for ads — as
well as its broader privacy poli-
cies around health data. They
said their privacy concerns are
particularly pressing given
Google’s a mbitions around health
data, which includes partnership
with Ascension Health, a network
of hospitals and doctors offices
that will allow the tech giant to
process millions of patients’
health records.
“If Google and its subsidiaries
fail to establish sufficient privacy
safeguards, Americans who use
the site will be more susceptible
to identity theft, negative credit
decisions, and employment dis-
crimination,” the lawmakers
wrote.
[email protected]Democrats voice worries
about online screening
BY ELIZABETH DWOSKINFacebook on Wednesday an-
nounced a portal that aims to be a
one-stop shop for its more than
2.5 billion users to find news and
resources about the novel corona-
virus, something it said was a step
in an effort to combat falsehoods
and provide accurate information
in the face of a fast-moving pan-
demic.
The new coronavirus informa-
tion center was to r oll out over the
next 24 hours and will go at the
top of users’ Facebook news feeds,
chief executive Mark Zuckerberg
said on a media call. He stressed
that the most important service
Facebook can provide right now is
authoritative information —
while removing hoaxes and other
falsehoods that could cause im-
mediate harm to public health.
“The top priority and focus for
us has been making sure peoplecan get access to good informa-
tion and trusted sources” during
the pandemic, he said.
Zuckerberg also said the com-
pany would allow thousands of
content moderators who review
banned content such as child por-
nography and terrorism to work
from home, even though doing so
could challenge the company’s ef-
forts to protect its members from
disturbing content. For weeks
now, moderators and other third-
party contractors complained
that while most full-time Face-
book employees have been work-
ing from home for over a month,
many contractors were still re-
quired to go t o the office as recent-
ly as Monday. Content modera-
tors circulated a petition on Face-
book’s internal systems protest-
ing the issue this week.
Since the new coronavirus be-
gan sweeping the world earlier
this year, misinformation has pro-
liferated across social media, in-
cluding on the company’s other
platforms, WhatsApp and Insta-
gram. As government leaders and
health officials are racing to con-
tain the global pandemic, that
onslaught of misinformation has
hindered some of their efforts.
Facebook has said it has al-
ready taken steps to combat mis-
information around the pandem-
ic. The social-networking giant
previously said it was working to
remove content making danger-
ous claims, such as those that
suggest that drinking bleach
cures the coronavirus, which vio-
late its policies prohibiting
speech that can cause real-world
harm. The decision to remove
such content was made personal-
ly by Zuckerberg, according to a
person familiar with the effort,
who said on the call that the issue
was fairly “black and white” for
him.
On the call, Zuckerberg said
that “even in the most free-ex-
pression-friendly traditions, like
the United States, there’s a prece-
dent that you don’t allow people
to yell fire in a crowded room.” He
added, “I had think this is similar.”
But Facebook is still struggling
to handle misinformation around
the coronavirus, as well as where
to draw the line around harmful
speech. Earlier this week the com-
pany conceded it had mistakenly
marked articles from legitimate
news sites as spam. The company
faces a particular challenge on its
WhatsApp messaging service be-
cause the content is encrypted,
making it harder to scan for policy
violations and harmful messages.Zuckerberg has defended the
notion that free speech should be
protected, no matter how ugly,
and the company typically refuses
to take down content that falls
short of causing real-world harm.
For example, Facebook recent-
ly chose to keep up an advertise-
ment by President Trump that
directed people to incorrect cen-
sus information, only to change
course in a matter of hours in
response to public pressure. The
company has a policy banning
misleading information about the
U.S. census. Zuckerberg has also
previously defended Holocaust
de nial on Facebook.
Facebook is taking a much
more muscular approach in re-
sponse to the coronavirus. Insta-
gram said it was removing false
information associated with the
covid-19 hashtag and replaced it
with resources from the World
Health Organization, the Centers
for Disease Control and Preven-
tion and other authorities. It has
also given those organizations
free advertising and has banned
the sale of medical face masks to
prevent people from profiting off
a pandemic.
Zuckerberg said he himself was
working from home and that do-
ing so was a “big change” n ow that
his kids’ schools were closed.
He said the company would
have to shift resources so content
moderators who worked from
home would take on less disturb-
ing content to review. Full-time
workers would help pick up the
slack. But workers in the Philip-
pines, where Facebook and other
tech giants employ thousands of
moderators, will not be able to
work from home, a Facebook offi-
cial later confirmed.
The new work-from-home p oli-
cies, Zuckerberg conceded, would
cause some slowdown in modera-
tion, particularly for posts where
content is less urgently problem-
atic. But he said he was still look-
ing for ways to ramp up Face-
book’s moderation efforts.
He said he was also concerned
about loneliness, referencing a
surge in the use of Facebook plat-
forms such as Messenger since
quarantines began. The use of
Messenger, for example, has dou-
bled in some locations, he said.
“I am worried about the isola-
tion of people being at home, that
it could lead to more depression
and mental health issues,” h e said.
“I want to make sure that we are
more ahead of that during this
time.”
[email protected]Facebook launches one-stop shop for news and resources about the virus
GABRIEL BOUYS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESA commuter scans his phone aboard a bus in Madrid this week. Spain was the second European
country, after Italy, to impose a nationwide lockdown to try to contain the novel coronavirus.
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