Democrats Blast Reported White House COVID-19 Surveillance System

The Trump administration’s reported plan to create a COVID-19 data surveillance program with healthcare and tech companies lacks transparency, Democratic lawmakers wrote the White House Friday. They noted the industry's “checkered history” protecting patient and user privacy. Some stakeholders also raised concerns.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act didn’t account for the “recent boom in health technologies allowing medical data to be shared without patient or doctor consent,” wrote Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va.; Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. Further empowering companies with unfettered access to “sensitive health information” during the pandemic could “fatally undermine health privacy,” they said. Apple and Google announced a collaborative effort Friday to develop a COVID-19 contact-tracing system through interoperable, cross-platform smartphone apps (see 2004100037).

Warner, Blumenthal and Eshoo said the White House’s reported denial of the “existence of this effort, despite ample corroborating reporting, only compounds concerns we have with lack of transparency.” The White House hasn’t given any indication it’s capable of maintaining a “massive health data network” without undermining personal privacy, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote Wednesday (see 2004080037).

Congress authorized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through its relief package to develop a modern data surveillance and analytics system. The White House, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Internet Association didn’t comment now.

Legislators still are trying to amend post-Sept. 11, 2001, legislation, which stripped many civil liberties and freedoms, emailed TechFreedom Civil Liberties Director Ashkhen Kazaryan. She noted last week’s DOJ inspector general report detailing extensive flaws in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications (see 2003310068). Now, the U.S. is at war with a virus, not a country, she said, meaning more transparency should be expected. To leverage data in the fight against COVID-19, she said there needs to be transparent, necessary and proportionate response; purpose limitation; data minimization and data retention requirements. Similar things are sought in Europe for such monitoring (see 200402000).

A Freedom of Information Act request from Electronic Privacy Information Center details how three health technology companies allegedly contacted the Health and Human Services Department to discuss ways to supply the government with healthcare data for the national COVID-19 surveillance system. EPIC requested a reported memo from Collective Medical, Juvare and PatientPing. The three companies didn’t comment.

EPIC noted White House adviser Jared Kushner’s task force and the proposed surveillance database that would give the government real-time access to patient healthcare data and hospital data. EPIC contended the database would draw “detailed information” from “multiple private-sector health databases to track where to allocate resources and to determine which areas need to maintain social-distancing rules.” The public has a right to contents of the memo and to know if the proposed system is lawful, EPIC said.