RAND Brief via Mary Whisner – Strengthening Privacy Protections in COVID-19 Mobile Phone–Enhanced Surveillance Programs [PDF only] by Benjamin Boudreaux, Matthew A. DeNardo, Sarah W. Denton, Ricardo Sanchez, Katie Feistel, Hardika Dayalani

“Public health officials worldwide are struggling to manage the lethal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As part of the response, governments, technology companies, and research organizations are leveraging emerging data-collection and data-analysis capabilities to understand the disease and model and track its spread through communities. Facilitated by a trove of technology-based data sources—in particular, the data generated from the widespread use of mobile phones—these public health surveillance programs could prove especially valuable for preventing successive waves of infections as quarantine orders are relaxed and economies reopen.”