Contact tracing by app: life-saving or invasion of privacy?

"Americans need to be “extra careful,” said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, because technology is a “force multiplier” that can take on a life of its own and create a surveillance state that’s entirely separate from the stated goals of stopping the spread of the virus.

Using the applications to enforce quarantines would be an example of overreach, Ms. Granick said, but Apple and Google’s model is designed so that information is not really useful for law enforcement.

“[The decentralised information] is well anonymized, so when it is uploaded to public health servers, you cannot readily deduce from it who was near whom at a point in time,” Ms. Granick said."