During the 1980s and the 1990s, the American business community became obsessed with measurement and tracking. Corporate managers maintained that if something was really important, it should be measured to provide feedback. The results would inform good decision-making and, where necessary, yield course corrections sooner, not later.
For most Americans, tracking is nothing unusual. Today, however, a new and different tracking debate is emerging about how to handle the global coronavirus pandemic. Technology that wasn’t available 40 years ago now drives this discussion.
In addition to mitigation and testing, efforts are underway to devise policies, practices and digital-content-tracing technology to identify and track individuals infected with the coronavirus. Bluetooth technology would support virus-alert apps that notify people if they venture too near infected individuals.
We’ve already seen aerial drones warning people to maintain social distancing, and in France (which still cherishes centralized bureaucracy and paperwork), people had to complete forms demonstrating to police that they had legitimate reasons for being outdoors.
Privacy advocates are understandably concerned, as they should be.
At issue is how people will be tested and tracked by Big Tech. The intentions are all good. At the same time, there are legitimate questions about how the tracking data will be gathered, shared and stored, and whether data collected for legitimate medical reasons might later be used for inappropriate, nonmedical purposes.
Information-technology companies are rushing to develop the software and related applications to facilitate what the medical community says is necessary to guard against future waves of coronavirus infections. With only modest testing thus far in the United States, tracking assumes a new urgency.
Some of the companies developing the new technology, however, have dismal records when it comes to protecting individual privacy. Given recent history, Americans are understandably skeptical.
Data is the equivalent of oil in the global online economy. Internet companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Netflix collect massive amounts of data based on individuals’ Internet activities: their interests, preferences, searches and purchases.
Clicks have now been monetized: individuals’ private data is free, and by monetizing this information, Big Tech companies have reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in income and profits.
While Google’s founding pledge was “Don’t Be Evil,” Financial Times global business columnist and associate editor Rana Foroohar demonstrates in her superb, must-read new book, “Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles – and All of Us,” how Big Tech’s practices have fallen far short of its early idealism and promises.
We’ve seen data breaches through hacking and ineptness, but also broken promises where Big Tech has said one thing and knowingly done another. With Big Tech and artificial intelligence evolving globally, what was once considered outlandish science fiction is now becoming commonplace and worrisome.
Consider China’s use of AI and facial-recognition technology to track citizens and assign “social credit” scores. There are serious concerns about how this tracking might be used to enforce allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party and stifle dissent.
We are still learning more details about how the coronavirus evolves as a pathogen: its virulence, how it spreads, and how to treat it. The coronavirus tracking goals are important, indeed critical, to blocking the spread of this deadly scourge. We should develop this tracking capacity promptly, as the technology will be central to our overall success.
At the same time, tracking must be accompanied by full transparency, 24/7 oversight and accountability. Tracking must proceed in a manner that also respects our Constitutionally protected liberties. Voluntary tracking makes the most sense.
Wartime presidents (Lincoln, Wilson and FDR) have previously looked the other way and trampled on the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. With today’s world awash in data, how that data is collected, used and stored matters. The tracking must withstand close Constitutional scrutiny.
Can we trust the Big Tech companies and the government by themselves to get this right? Unfortunately, no.
As we develop and implement a coronavirus tracking system, we need citizen and media oversight of everything developed. We must turn the tables to ensure that the American people are now watching Big Brother.
Charles Kolb served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy from 1990-1992 in the George H.W. Bush White House