A Pandemic should not be used as an excuse to engage in monstrous violations of privacy and basic civil rights.

As Americans shelter-in-place to avoid the spread of COVID19, disturbing examples have emerged of leaders at the state and local levels taking this “shelter-in-place” to the extreme.

From issuing citations to individuals for driving alone in cars or surfing alone on the beach, to ticketing Americans who attended socially distant church services, over-zealous enforcement has trampled on essential civil liberties.

We are also wary of any long-term plans that involve sustained federal surveillance of the population under the guise of preventing further viral spread.

Contact tracing is an important method of isolating and containing pathogens, and conversation between doctor and patient on this point should be encouraged. But any attempt to federalize this effort, or partner with private corporations to surveil the population via location tracking or cell phone data, raises serious concerns and should be heavily scrutinized.

Google is already offering aggregate user location data to governments interested in tracking compliance with social distancing around specific locations. Google and Apple have announced a partnership to develop a contact-tracing program using physical proximity data. While the program is currently “opt-in” there are few details available about privacy protections, how or if the data will be shared, and with whom.

Moreover, senior advisors in the White House have indicated their willingness to partner with these companies to create a national coronavirus surveillance system.

A pandemic should not be used as an excuse to engage in monstrous violations of privacy and basic civil rights. This sounds more like Tom Hanks’ initiative in the movie The Circle than it does a public health response. We firmly oppose any effort to use this crisis to institute national tracking of individual citizens for any reason.

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