After 9/11, we gave up privacy for security. Will we make the same trade-off after Covid-19?
In a span of weeks, the novel coronavirus has turned the nation’s roiling health privacy debate on its head. Concerns about what Google and Facebook might be doing with patients’ sensitive health information have receded, and instead, Americans are being asked to allow surveillance of their daily movements and contacts, and even their temperature and other physiological changes.
By tapping into people’s phones and medical records, researchers and public health authorities are hoping to more swiftly identify and isolate potentially infected patients and corral a pandemic that is outrunning them despite unprecedented restrictions on daily life.
