The Security and Privacy of Contact Tracing

05/23/20 • 20 min

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While governments, policymakers, and employers around the world are all figuring out how to reopen the economy, contact tracing -- which includes identifying and warning contacts of exposure in order to stop chains of transmission -- is a key strategy for preventing further spread of a disease like COVID-19.

But approaches vary from manual to automated. And different regions have different frameworks, whether combined with GPS (location data) and CCTV as in South Korea -- or mainly Bluetooth-based, as in Singapore and elsewhere. The players and apps also vary in whether they're from corporations, grassroots/citizen efforts; employer-facing or for widespread public-health surveillance; or even just open vs. closed, decentralized vs. centralized, and so on.

So we break it all down in this week's episode of 16 Minutes on the News with Joel de la Garza, in conversation with Sonal Chokshi, given headlines around Apple and Google’s approach, called "privacy-safe contact tracing". What ARE the security and privacy concerns here? Yet technology is not the biggest part of this discussion; it’s also about rights, cultures, and values... and the bigger questions around what happens when people are "transformed into cellphone signals".

Previous Episode

CRISPR for Covid Testing and FDA EUAs

As calls for better, faster, cheaper, portable testing for COVID-19 disease are heard around the world -- given the important role of test-trace-isolate in re-opening the economy! -- the FDA recently issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for a CRISPR-based diagnostic.

It's the first authorized use of CRISPR technology for an infectious disease test. So we discuss this topic in this week's episode of 16 Minutes -- our show where we cover the news headlines, tease apart what's hype/what's real from our vantage point in tech, and share where we are on the overall arc of various trends -- covering:

where are we with testing for COVID overall given the taxonomy of what's already here and what's coming;
where are we with CRISPR technology, given that this is the one of the first times it's being used for diagnostics vs. therapeutics (and that clinical trials are only coming of age there now;
how does this work, and how does this type of CRISPR compare to the PCR approach for testing; and
how do EUAs and more play out given past policy debates and discussions of CRISPR and gene editing

...with a16z general partner Jorge Conde and bio deal team partner Andy Tran, in conversation with Sonal Chokshi.

On 16 Minutes, we also offer frameworks for thinking about the topics covered, so we also discuss: the tradeoffs between specificity and sensitivity when it comes to testing, especially when there's a big difference in false positives in testing for the disease vs. testing for antibodies; the tradeoffs between decentralized vs. centralized testing (getting the sample to the test or getting the test to the sample), especially given the potential for pregnancy-kit like tests here; and the tradeoffs between specific, scalable, and sensible testing ...Is it possible to have it all when it comes to CRISPR??

Next Episode

Section 230 CDA: Content Moderation, Free Speech, the Internet

In this special "2x" episode (#32) of our news show 16 Minutes -- where we quickly cover the headlines and tech trends, offering analysis, frameworks, explainers, and more -- we cover the tricky but important topic of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The 1996 law has been in the headlines a lot recently, in the context of Twitter, the president's tweets, and an executive order put out by the White House just this week on quote- "preventing online censorship". All of this is playing out against the broader, more profound cultural context and events around the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and beyond, and ongoing old-new debates around content moderation on social media.

To make sense of only the technology and policy aspects of Section 230 specifically -- and where the First Amendment, content moderation, and more come in -- a16z host Sonal Chokshi brings on our first-ever outside guest for 16 Minutes, Mike Masnick, founder of the digital-native policy think tank Copia Institute and editor of the longtime news & analysis site Techdirt.com (which also features an online symposium for experts discussing difficult policy topics). Masnick has written extensively about these topics -- not just recently but for years -- along with others in media recently attempting to explain what's going on and dissect what the executive order purports to do (some are even tracking different versions as well).

So what's hype/ what's real -- given this show's throughline! -- around what CDA 230 precisely does and doesn't do, the role of agencies like the FCC, and more? What are the nuances and exceptions, and how do we tease apart the most common (yet incorrect) rhetorical arguments such as "platform vs. publisher", "like a utility/ phone company", "public forum/square" and so on? Finally: how does and doesn't Section 230 connect to the First Amendment when it comes to companies vs. governments; what does "good faith" really mean and what are possible paths and ways forward among the divisive debates around content moderation? All this and more in this 2x+ long explainer episode of 16 Minutes.