The Epidemiologist, The Citizen, and The Privacy Advocate

The pandemic is going to be studied for many years to come. Not just by virologists, but by social scientists and technology ethicists.

The latest development in Shanghai has been the 随申办 (Suíshēnbàn) app. It’s a service you download onto your phone that runs a continuous contagion assessment on you. It’s not mandatory, but for the last two weeks it has been getting increasingly difficult to enter certain buildings without showing your colour code.

Green means you are clear to enter. Orange or red means you can’t enter, and you should consult medical experts as soon as possible. Maybe it knows you’re a confirmed COVID-19 patient. Maybe you’ve arrived from outside China and shouldn’t be out of quarantine yet. Maybe it tracked you to a metro car with someone who later tested positive for the virus.

It’s an epidemiologist’s dream. It’s a citizen’s electronic peace of mind. And it’s a privacy advocate’s dystopian nightmare.

For the LinkedIn version, see here.