Connect with the House Financial Services Committee Get the latest news: https://financialservices.house.gov/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FinancialDems/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FSCDems ___________________________________ On Wednesday, July 8, 2020, from 12:00 p.m. (ET) Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Chairman Foster and Ranking Member Loudermilk will host a virtual hearing entitled, “Exposure Notification and Contact Tracing: How AI Helps Localities Reopen Safely and Researchers Find a Cure." - - - - - - - - Witnesses for this one-panel hearing will be: • Brian McClendon, CEO, Co-founder, CVKey Project • Krutika Kuppalli, M.D., Infectious Diseases Physician • Andre M. Perry, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institute • Ramesh Raskar, Professor, MIT and Founder, PathCheck Foundation Overview The novel coronavirus 2019 (“COVID-19”) pandemic has had a significant public health and economic impact on the United States, including on the financial services sector. As states halt or reverse phased reopening’s because of recent increases in COVID-19 infections, the ability to trace and contain the virus continues to remain a top priority for all aspects of society. Contact tracing and exposure notification have the potential to help isolate coronavirus cases and keep workers, including at financial institutions, safe. Artificial intelligence (“AI”) has been instrumental in helping experts analyze the influx of new research and data related to how COVID-19 continues to evolve. However, some experts have raised concerns about using AI to analyze consumer and financial data related to COVID-19 because doing so may violate consumer privacy laws. Contact Tracing, Data Privacy and Public Health Safety The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) has stressed the need for individuals to opt-in to contact tracing and social distancing in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. Contact tracing is the process of identifying people who have contracted an infectious disease and their close contacts to prevent the further transmission of the infection. Generally, three types of contact tracing: (1) manual contact tracing, (2) digital contact tracing, and (3) and digital exposure notification. Manual Contact Tracing. Manual contact tracing involves public health experts interviewing people who have contracted COVID-19 and asking them to identity everyone they had close contact with during the time they may have been infectious. Manual contact tracing assumes that consumers will respond to communications from health experts, and that health experts have the most up-to-date address information. These two factors alone disproportionately affect certain populations, including persons experiencing homelessness. Manual tracing is also complicated because fraudsters have started COVID-19 contact tracing scams, which may make consumers less inclined to share confidential information, even with a reputable health official. The Federal Trade Commission released a joint statement with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice alerting consumers of tips to be aware for contact tracing calls asking for wire transfers and credit and debit card numbers. Digital Contact Tracing. Digital contact tracing uses data from public Wi-Fi and smartphone sensors to identify persons who may have been proximate to the location data of an infected person. Digital contact tracing data can be used to notify smartphone holders and public health officials by phone, in person, or automatically of an individual’s exposure and the time window of exposure. One concern with digital contact tracing is that it assumes that most people have smartphones, know how to use smartphones, always have access to the internet or Bluetooth technology on their smartphones, and will voluntarily respond and notify authorities when they contract COVID-19. In the United States, a person would have to notify the smartphone COVID-19 app that they contracted COVID-19 before the app notifies any other users who opted-into notifications. However, in South Korea and China, data collection is involuntary and based on financial transactions, cell phone location data, and security cameras—as soon as the AI identifies an infected person in either of those two countries the police can ask them to self-quarantine for 14 days. There are also questions about the accuracy of digital contact tracing. One study found that a Wi-Fi enable iPhone 6 location-based measurements were limited and often inaccurate, showing errors of location identification between nine and fifty-two feet. Finally, some have raised concerns that even though individuals opt-in to share their data in a digital contact tracing app, the app may collect excessive amounts of information and use that information in ways the individual... Hearing page: https://financialservices.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=406731