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Law360 (April 23, 2020, 9:16 PM EDT) -- As Apple and Google team up to roll out a coronavirus contact tracing app powered by smartphone data, a Democratic senator is pushing the White House to come up with its own plans and privacy guidelines.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., called on the Trump administration on Wednesday to formulate a "science-based" nationwide plan for tracing the contacts of people who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, calling it the "only way to safely return to normal life in this country."
More than 860,000 people across the country have already been stricken with the disease, and more than 48,000 have died from it as states scramble to scrape up enough personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses treating the surge of patients.
"[The] federal government must provide leadership, coordination, and guidance to ensure that contact tracing efforts are effective and do not infringe upon individuals' civil liberties, including the right to privacy," Markey said in the open letter addressed to Vice President Mike Pence, who heads up the White House coronavirus task force.
The letter includes a set of principles that the lawmaker thinks should guide any federal undertaking aimed at tracing contacts to stem the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Among them are transparency, limits on how any collected data is used and a requirement that people opt-in to the program and aren't participants without their knowledge. The data should also be safely guarded, with legal recourse available for anyone whose privacy is violated, the letter said.
The senator's call for privacy protections follows Google and Apple's announcement that they are joining forces for their own contact tracing venture, one that will tap into the tech giants' vast banks of location data to allow people to find out if they have come into contact or proximity with someone who has since tested positive for COVID-19.
Apple and Google have promised that any data they use will be anonymized, but privacy advocates have remained wary about the venture, which has potential for major public health boons but also puts massive amounts of personal data at risk of misuse.
Earlier this week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., laid out his concerns about the venture based on Google's "poor record on privacy."
But others are cautiously optimistic, including the American Civil Liberties Union, saying that the tech giants' current privacy plan "offers a strong start" but still needs tweaks to ensure stronger protections.
Meanwhile, the U.K.'s privacy watchdog gave the contact tracing app the thumbs up after finding that it "aligned with the principles" of Britain's privacy law.
--Additional reporting by Ben Kochman and Allison Grande. Editing by Nicole Bleier.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
