How to Avoid a Pandemic Patriot Act

The last time the United States faced a big, hard-to-track threat, we ended up with the Patriot Act and a mass-surveillance program that still rankles. This time, how do we use technology to combat the novel coronavirus without creating elements of a police state?

Technology ought to be our best weapon in maintaining public health as the United States transitions back to work. High-tech testing can identify who had covid-19 (and is more likely to be “safe” now), and who’s most vulnerable to infection as the country opens up. Contact tracing can help minimize second and third bounces of the virus — while we all wait for the vaccine that, hopefully sometime next year, will bring some real relief.

This transition is doable. The tools are in our hands, literally, in the cellphones most Americans carry. The two giants of cellular telephony, Google and Apple, have already created a joint contact tracing technology that would live on our Android and iPhone devices.

Our phones could also coordinate the rapid and robust antibody testing program we need. They could connect us quickly with screeners and testers to arrange fast drive-through testing (bypassing traditional laboratory bureaucracy that is overwhelmed and slow to respond). And soon after we’re tested, we could receive a digital QR-coded certification — like an airplane boarding pass or an electronic ticket to a sports event — that could be used by employers and service providers to help ensure safe workplaces.

But nothing is easy in America these days. The anti-lockdown protesters in states such as Ohio and Michigan who are demanding to reopen the country quickly might be reluctant to provide the very data that might help them go back to work safely. Their privacy worries are widely shared. Americans have a gut belief: Live free or die.