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Education Dive
Tech-based contact tracing could put schools in murky privacy territory
Shawna De La Rosa
Sept. 9, 2020
Dive Brief:
A white paper from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP)
suggests the use of contact tracing technology by schools could erode
student privacy and may not be effective in preventing the spread of
coronavirus.
As an alternative, the whitepaper suggests manual contact tracing
methods that allow school officials to talk to students and staff to
learn more about possible points of exposure, noting these approaches
have been successfully used in outbreak control for decades.
Most K-12 school officials using technological contact tracing are
doing it through wearable tracking devices that use GPS, Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi triangulation to track students, but GPS location data can be off
by 22 to 42 feet, exceeding the margin of error needed to identify
those within the six-foot range. Wearable tech can also be
cost-prohibitive: In 2019, Hillsborough County, Florida, paid CENTEGIX
$7.6 million, or $30,400 per school, for a non-COVID related tracking
system.
Dive Insight:
Tracking students for contact tracing purposes may lead to questionable
privacy territory for schools, especially when tracking minors. Despite
the pandemic, schools still must conform to the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other laws governing student
privacy. Districts can disclose information to public health officials,
for example, but information can’t be released to the general public
without written consent from parents.
The STOP paper also suggests ongoing location tracking could lead to
the appropriation and misuse of data by law enforcement and
immigration. The potential for use to exacerbate the school-to-prison
pipeline with students of color or for data to be used to deport people
close to students could disincentivize the use of tech-based contact
tracing by families. STOP argues more data safeguards are needed,
including bans on the use of contact tracing data for educational
purposes like monitoring truancy, and that data should be promptly
deleted once a student recovers.
That’s not stopping some schools from using technology to track the
spread of COVID-19. The Safely Reopen Schools mobile app is one tool
available for automating contact tracing. The idea is that if two
mobile phones are close enough to connect via Bluetooth, the phone
owners are close enough to transmit the virus. The app includes daily
health check-ins and educational notifications, but no personal
information is exchanged between the phones, and the app won’t disclose
who tested positive.
Colleges are also using apps to help trace and track students’ exposure
to coronavirus. In August, 20,000 participants from the University of
Alabama at Birmingham were asked to test the GuideSafe mobile app,
which will alert them if they’ve been in contact with someone who
tested positive for COVID-19. The app determines the proximity of two
people through cell phone signal strength. If someone reports they
contracted the virus, an alert will be sent to anyone who has been
within six feet of them for at least 15 minutes over the previous two
weeks.
Critics of the technology claim these apps aren’t actually capable of
contract tracing and could undermine manual efforts to do so.
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