Digital contact tracing: security theater to surveillance enabler

Back in the Spring, digital contact tracing was heralded as the hi-tech path out of the pandemic. With the benefit of six months of hindsight, the limitations of the approach have become clear [see Schneier for a concise summing-up of its shortcomings].

While digital contact tracing’s notional benefits seem to belong squarely in the realm of security theater (i.e., showing the public that Something Is Being Done), its potential for justifying intrusive surveillance remains intact. Two recent news items illustrate this dynamic. A small liberal arts college in Michigan is forcing its students to download a contact-tracing app (and apparently a security vulnerability-riddled one, at that) as a condition for being allowed on campus. Meanwhile, the delegates to the Republican National Convention reportedly are to wear “smart badges” (originally developed for tracking pallets) to record their movements through the convention venue in Charlotte. While higher education has long been a laboratory of choice for surveillance technology experimentation, I would have expected the libertarian wing of the GOP to kick up more of a fuss over this kind of intrusion.