"Digital contact tracing is no substitute for human health care workers and medical testing, cautions Margaret Hu, an associate professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. “If you don’t have widespread testing, and if you don’t have accurate testing,” she says, “are you, through this warning system, going to have a very large rate of false warnings or under-warnings?”
And, Professor Hu notes, state powers enacted during extraordinary times have a way of being repurposed once the crisis passes. “Emergency state powers lend themselves to normalizing surveillance in day-to-day governance,” she says. “If you don’t fight to protect the liberties, freedoms, and privileges afforded by the Constitution, it’s very hard to claw them back once those rights are ceded to the government.”"
- Date Published:05/07/2020
- Original Publication:The Christian Science Monitor