This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 16, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Contact tracing is invasive.

Data retention policies by governments are less than clear.

And given the limitations of the technologies in use,

contact tracing may not be very effective.

In the Cato Institute's new report,

Pandemics and policy, Caters Matthew Feeney and Julian Sanchez,

contributed chapter detailing some better practices to protect privacy for contact tracing.

At the beginning of this pandemic, contact tracing was one of the many solutions that was thrown out there and a great debate raged between public versus private and to what degree the state would know things

about us, frankly.

Where does that stand now? How many states have undertaken contact tracing and how have they done it?

It's actually hard to say. You know, you know, one thing we're seeing is that the uptake of digital contact tracing, of technology-assisted contact tracing,

specifically using

smartphone-based applications has been a lot slower and more spotty

than anyone I think really had expected.

There was an instance in Utah where an app was developed and rolled out but had enormous issues and frankly use for privacy problems to sharing information inappropriately with

third parties. I think Colorado is poised to become the first state to roll out an app that is integrating the new Apple

Google model and there's a handful of states, I think frankly maybe four or five states have indicated an intention to adopt

the protocol that those two companies jointly developed that uses Bluetooth proximity sensing to detect or as a proxy for proximity and

therefore potential exposure to COVID. But you know the vast majority of

states may be doing some kind of manual contact tracing, but have not prioritized the digital version. And indeed, we've seen states that began developing

...