The police can access your online family-tree research—and use it to investigate your relatives

Scientists have observed that molecular markers for COVID-19 can be detected in wastewater of infected communities both during an outbreak and, in some cases, before the first case is confirmed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government entities are considering whether to add community surveillance through wastewater monitoring to assist in tracking disease prevalence and guiding public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This scientific breakthrough may lead to many useful potential applications for tracking disease, intensifying testing, initiating social distancing or quarantines, and even lifting restrictions once a cessation of infection is detected and confirmed. Yet, new technologies developed in response to a public health crisis may raise difficult legal and ethical questions about how such technologies may impact both the public health and civil liberties of the population. This paper describes recent scientific evidence regarding COVID-19 detection in wastewater, identifying public health benefits that may result from this breakthrough, as well as the limitations of existing data. The paper then assesses the legal and ethical implications of implementing policy based on positive sewage signals. It concludes that the first step to implementing legal and ethical wastewater monitoring is to develop scientific understanding. Even if reliability and efficacy are established, limits on sample and data collection, use, and sharing must also be considered to prevent undermining privacy and autonomy in order to implement these public health strategies consistent with legal and ethical considerations.

Epidemiological surveillance programs such as digital contact tracing have been touted as a silver bullet that will free the American public from the strictures of social distancing, enabling a return to school, work, and socializing. This Article assesses whether and under what circumstances the United States ought to embrace such programs. Part I analyzes the constitutionality of programs like digital contact tracing, arguing that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures may well regulate the use of location data for epidemiological purposes, but that the legislative and executive branches have significant latitude to develop these programs within the broad constraints of the ``special needs'' doctrine elaborated by the courts in parallel circumstances. Part II cautions that the absence of a firm warrant requirement for digital contact tracing should not serve as a green light for unregulated and mass digital location tracking. In light of substantial risks to privacy, policy makers must ask hard questions about efficacy and the comparative advantages of location tracking versus more traditional means of controlling epidemic contagions, take seriously threats to privacy, tailor programs parsimoniously, establish clear metrics for determining success, and set clear plans for decommissioning surveillance programs.