NEWSWEEK.COM 19
But Americans are not quite like the rest of the
world. Perhaps more than the population of any
other country in the world, Americans tend to
resist letting the government keep a close eye on
them, even under life-and-death circumstances. In
the case of contact tracing, that reluctance looks
like an immovable obstacle. “In a fast-moving pan-
demic, protecting individuals’ rights to privacy
limits the ability of the government to protect the
health of the population,” says Eric Campbell, a re-
searcher with the University of Colorado’s medical
campus specializing in health policy and bioethics.
The challenge is not technological. The Goo-
gle-Apple plan and other proposed automated
contact-tracing schemes check off all the boxes
that privacy advocates have drawn. The challenge,
rather, is that the privacy requirements themselves
block data that health care officials need to keep
people safe. None of the plans proposed so far gives
officials and individuals enough reliable, detailed
information to make a big difference.
The value Americans place on privacy virtually
guarantees that automated contact tracing isn’t
going to make a big difference any time in the next
several months and may never achieve the impact
in the US it’s having elsewhere in the world.Just Saying No
any us contact-tracking scheme for cell
phones, no matter how well crafted, is likely to run
into a buzzsaw of noncompliance. No one expects
the Trump administration to require participation.
No state has floated a mandatory plan, either. States
and localities that have mandated masks have seen
angry protests in response. The town of Stillwater,
Oklahoma, lifted its mask-wearing proclamation af-
ter businesses reported receiving serious threats from
customers. On May 1, a store security guard in Flint,
Mich. who demanded that a customer comply with
the state’s mask-wearing requirement was shot dead.Ơ In a fast-moving pandemic, protecting individuals’
rights to privacy limits the ability of the government
to protect the Ơ HEALTH OF THE POPULATION.
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