"How Technology Can Help Identify a 'Safe' Workforce and Protect Personal Privacy"
In a new white paper, titled "Restarting the Economy and Avoiding Big Brother," MIT Professor Alex Pentland suggests that policymakers and business leaders consider using digital tools that create safe environments for employees and consumers, and preserve privacy as they grapple the idea of reopening the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. According to public health officials, personal data must be collected to determine who is at an increased risk of contracting the virus as well as who is healthy and can return to work. However, privacy advocates have expressed concerns about who will access the data and how this data will be stored and used. Professor Pentland proposes the use of advanced computing methods that would preserve health data privacy and data ownership. It was suggested that health certification is performed through the use of high-tech methods that generate risk maps from anonymized data, which are sanitized using differential privacy methods. This article continues to discuss the use of technology to certify a person's health status and support safe environments while also protecting privacy.