Small government advocates raise concerns over contact tracing in coronavirus fight

A high-tech method to pinpoint who is infected with the coronavirus is drawing pushback over potential privacy abuses.

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of the chamber's most conservative Republicans, is among the most outspoken about contact tracing.

That process involves health workers interviewing people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to figure out who they may have recently been in contact with. Then, they tell people who may have been exposed, sometimes encouraging them to quarantine themselves to prevent spreading the virus further.

Biggs last week warned that contact tracing could be abused by authorities. Biggs, first elected to the House in 2016, told the Washington Examiner his concerns had been verified by reports that a firm hired by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to spearhead COVID-19 contact tracing, and which would manage the medical data of private citizens, had ties to Democratic politicians and had been given a no-bid contract. Whitmer eventually ended the state's contract with the company.

"This is exactly why one should be concerned," Biggs said. "There's so many things to think about here when you start looking at this, and you see what happened in Michigan, and they basically had to pull it back."

The story surfaced after Commissioner Wes Nakagiri, a Republican from Livingston County, Michigan, volunteered to help out in the state's contact tracing program in the Detroit exurbs. He discovered through volunteer training materials that Michiganders' private medical information was being logged and banked through a Democratic political consulting firm.

According to Nakagiri, volunteers in Michigan were set up with public health officials to reach out to residents by phone to contact individuals who came into contact with a coronavirus-positive person and relay key information to people who are at a higher risk of contracting the virus.

In addition to the informational call, Nakagiri told the Washington Examiner, the volunteers asked a list of questions, including: "How is your health now? Do you have shortness of breath? Do you have abdominal pain? Can you tell me the names and ages of persons living in your household? What is your email address?"

"On one of those (training) slides, I'm reading through the thing, and they mentioned the voters. What does that have to do with, kind of, you know, contact tracing? And then, I read down a little bit lower, and I see NGP Van — powered by NGP Van," Nakagiri told the Washington Examiner.

According to NGP Van's website, it describes itself as the "leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations, as well as nonprofits, municipalities, and other groups, offering clients an integrated platform of the best fundraising, compliance, field, organizing, digital, and social networking products."

NGP Van currently offers a webinar series on "political fundraising during a pandemic."

On slide 17 of the training materials, volunteers are advised to say to people they contact: "Just so you know, everything we talk about is confidential." And slide 22 shows volunteers how to respond if an individual answers "yes" to being coronavirus-positive.

"This is just a phone banking system, and I've used phone banking software, as an activist, making calls for campaigns — punching in the data, answers to the questions into the database," Nakagiri said. "And I concluded that the state of Michigan was planning on entering this confidential, private health information in a political database. You know, it's wrong. It's wrong."

However, prior to the contract cancellation with Great Lakes Community Engagement, thousands of Michiganders' data were already logged.

According to a Monday press release by the Michigan Office of Wellness and Human Products and Services, over 130 staff members and volunteers "have been assisting local health departments with case investigation over the past couple weeks and have reached more than 12,000 COVID-positive individuals."

Other states have already begun their own contact tracing programs and have called on the federal government to provide further funding to help their efforts. However, privacy concerns remain issues as groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have cited potential civil liberty pitfalls with the process.

"As part of the nearly unprecedented societal response to COVID-19, proximity tracing apps raise difficult questions about privacy, efficacy, and responsible engineering of technology to advance public health," EFF Deputy Executive Director Kurt Opsahl told the Washington Examiner in an email statement on contact tracing technology.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, an advocate for contact tracing, told the Washington Examiner that Whitmer "went against all norms" with her contact tracing program.

"She literally gave it to a political consultant that she buys data from. She quickly pulled it back when sunlight was brought to them. This is what we're talking about. Stop playing politics. American families do not expect this, nor do they want this," he said. "We are battling with something we have not seen before, and for someone to play politics with this — to bring politics into this — is completely wrong."