To participate in todays hearing. Members are reminded to keep p their video function on at all ible for hemsel theyre notot recognized by the chair. Ve the members are also reminded ey that they are responsible for muting and unmuting themselves. To mute themselves after they r have finished speaking. Consistent with regulations, 96s astaff will only mute members and witnesses as appropriate when not recognized to avoid inadvertent background noise an otherre embarrassments. Members are reminded that all house rules related to order ano decorum apply to this remote trn hearing. G this hearings entitled exposure notification and Contact Tracing, how ai helps localities open safety and researchers finn it pure. Statem i will now recognize myself for four minutes to give an openingc statement. Good morning. Todays hearing will focus on the essential trade offs that ry the covid19 pandemic is forcing upon us to make between life, liberty, privacy, and the pursuit of happiness. A and the role that technology, financial transaction data, mab Contact Tracinge apps, and Artificial Intelligence in particular may be able to play to improve that essential tradeo off. And there will be a trade off. Americans have come to see privacy as an essential part ofo liberty. And the trade offs between privacy and state interests are something that we struggle with continually on the Financial Services committee. E. Ifif ones only concern were li and the pursuit of happiness and crushing the covid19 virus as c quickly as possible, one can imagine setting up a dystopian surveillance state where every n credit card purchase, every web search query, the exact very m locations of everyov cell phone were continuously monitored and where ai powered facial e recognition cameras, not only d when b you are buying groceriest whole foods but everywhere you went. This would be an epidemiologists dream and would allow whatever country that implemented that to very rapidly crush the coronavirus pandemic. D whenever someone tested positive, their credit cart purchases, their cell phone prr data, all their Financial Data t and other data would be immediately analyzed. Ai and inrly fact some press reporn indicate that korea, an effect otherwise fairly free country finds credit card data to be a key component in effective Contact Tracing. This aggressive approach would allow faster Scientific Understanding of the spreading mechanisms as well. Re lik ai learning algorithms might rapidly learn that you are, for example, much more likely to spread the disease if you happew to buy three beers at the bar than if you bought only one. And cell phone location data would indicate that you are likely who you are likely to suchrvicead it to. Such an aienabled pandemic surveillance state would correctly identify in real time, for example, that super spreader individuals almost never wore masks in public and that churches and Sports Events were especially dangerous places to congregate. But witho a surveillance state that would automatically warn black lives matter protesters to disperse. And there are assenti huge numb worries along those lines. The and this is all essentially g this is not science fiction. This is essentially the same technology that hong kong and thee chinese mainland governmen is using to suppress protesterse inven fighting for their libert. Such Surveillance Systems might well save life and maximize life and arguably even part of the pursuit of happiness. And perhaps it would even maximizeis would economic liber opening our economy sooner. But this would come at a respon tremendous cost todi individual privacy and liberty. The trade offs that we make ree responding tont covid19 have rl financial and economic impacts. D a atorrecent study by goldman s quantified the trade off between mandatory Mask Policies and economic growth. They found unsurprisingly to scientists that mandatory asking but policies havee negative impact on the spread of covid19 but a positive impact on economic growth. Re thisop alloweden countries withp mandatory masking policies to reopen their economies sooner while maintaining acceptable covid19 infection rates, thereby successfully trading off the loss of liberty for mandatory masking tracing or in from Economic Activity from earlier opening of the retail i economy. Contact tracingne apps togetherd with back end ai that combines the raw data from cell phone tracking and various forms withl other data sources including bs financial, that covid positive e patients might opt into on a voluntary basis, has the potential to capture some of the health and economic benefits of much more intrusive monitoring while preserving acceptable levels of privacy for those whon opt in. At this hearing, we have expert practitioners experienced in the development of privacy preserving Contact Tracing software, in real tief tracing in pandemic situations, and in n studyingesse the perils that ma lerk. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and recognize the Ranking Member for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman and special thank you to our witnesses for being part of this hearing today. Ays today well discuss how technology assists the country with reopening. Take there are many ways in which md local, state and federal es get governments as well as b businesses, schools and other organizations can take advantage of modern technology to help our communities get back to normal. B one area where technology could be usefulul iscont inac contact. The manual method of Contact Tracing involves Public Health t officialsac speaking with officials who have the virus to identify people who they have close contact with during thes time they have been infectious, notifying those people of theirf their exposure and referring them for testing. In a nation with about 333 million people, its difficult to manual Contact Tracing on a mass scale. However, there are encouraging technologies that can enable Contact Tracing to be done with smartphones, including bluetooth or other location data, to track peoples movements and match them to the movements of others who have been exposed to the virus. In order for digital Contact Tracing to work, it must have strong participation from citizens. Experts estimate that 40 to 60 of the population in a given area would need to participate in Contact Tracing system for it to be effective. This means that in the United States where participation in Contact Tracing is voluntary, and should be, and is handled primarily by state and local Public Health officials, citizens will need to trust the apps that they are using and feel confident in their privacy will not be violated. In order to have that trust, it is critical the citizens understand what data will be collected, who will have access to the datacing and unloaded at states and other parts of the world. Recent polling indicates about twothirds of americans would agree at the Contact Tracing app developed by the federal government. Some european entries where the government has released the Contact Tracing app less than 3 of the appalacian is using the app. Countries like china have increased perspiration by making Contact Tracing mandatory and have used social media platforms to track movements. Needless to say it should not happen in the United States. Given that privacy will be paramount a and should not happen in the United States. Given that privacy will be paramount, a major limiting factor in our ability to enact nationwide digital Contact Tracing is that we do not have a Consumer Data Privacy law or do we have a. Contact tracing is operating under a patchwork of state laws and the circumstances only increases the need for a National Standard. Committee republicans have been working diligently to develop a Consumer Data Privacy proposal without a National Consumer data provides sea protection law. This issue is best left up to the states. Another limiting factor is the accuracy of digital Contact Tracing apps has been questionable and could result in false positives or false negatives. The cdc stated in its guidelines that more data is needed to assess the true Public Health value of digital Contact Tracing. Criminals have also been posing as Contact Tracers to ask consumers to share their Social Security numbers or bank account number, which can subject customers to fraud or subjective consumers to fraud and further reduced the Publics Trust in Contact Tracing. Another challenge is that low income and Homeless Individuals who have been disproportionately affected by the virus, often do not have a smartphone which limits the effectiveness of digital Contact Tracing in those populations. While these are important topics to address, they are generally not Financial Services conditions and its best to have these discussions with committees of jurisdiction. For example, the energy and Commerce Committee will have a hearing on some of these issues tomorrow. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and i yield back. Thank you. The chair will now recognize the chairwoman of the Polk Committee for one minute. Thank you very much chairman foster. I thank you for holding this hearing in containing and preventing the spread of the coronavirus. It is essential to protecting our economy. While last weeks employment figures demonstrate a slight rebound in the number of coronaviruses cases is sharply increasing and state reopenings have halted or reversed. Contact tracing and limiting the period of coronavirus is critical for all aspects of our economy including Financial Institutions that may bring workers back to the workplace. I look forward to hearing our expert Panel Discuss how Artificial Intelligence and other technologies can be used in and exclude inclusive manner to help contain the coronavirus and ultimately keep people safe. I want to thank you and i yield back the balance of my time. Thank you. Today we welcome the testimony of Brian Mcclendon, the ceo and cofounder of the siddiqui project which is building a suite of open source applications to help States Reopen responsibly without compromising privacy. Previously, he was Vice President and cofounder of google earth and street view and Vice President of mapping at uber. Secondly, doctor krutika kuppali, an Infectious Disease physician who has previously worked on the front lines of various humanitarian responses including the 2014 west africa a bullet outbreak and the current drc ebola outbreak. And now the coronavirus outbreak. Andre perry whose focus has been on the onset of the covid19 pandemic, the underlying reasons for the disproportionate deaths among the African American community. He focuses on Machine Learning and Machine Learning for health and sustainability. He is founder of the path Check Foundation, a global nonprofit building open Source Software and standards for digital Contact Tracing and exposure notification to stop covid19. Witnesses are reminded that your oral testimony will be limited to five minutes. A chime will go off at the end of your time. I ask you to respect the members and other witnesses time by wrapping up your oral testimony is scheduled. Without objection, your written statement will be made part of the record. Mr. Mcclendon, you are now recognized for five minutes to give an oral presentation of your testimony. Mem chairman foster, Ranking Member loudermilk and members of the task force. My name is Brian Mcclendon im a Research Professor at the university of kansas and the ceo of. Previously, i spent ten years leading the teams who created google maps and google earth and many other job related services. Thank you for giving me the chance to speak before the task force to date. In my testimony, i will describe how privacy, disclosure and opt in Data Collection impact our ability to identify, locate and isolate those who have been exposed or infected by covid19. Siddiqui project is a fiveinone c three help focused on helping america reopen responsive really giving the ongoing pandemic. Get together with my world class engineers and developers, we built user data privacy into a key app called cvkey and we are focused on getting that adopted around the country today. It focuses on individual symptom checking, policy communications across communities and Access Control to venue such as universities and schools. As weve recently seen in the media, there is a significant need to improve communication of policies if we have hope to operate at anywhere near close to normal for the next 18 months. Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning were part in part large amounts of data for train purposes. This ground truth data helped algorithms figure out to make better predictions. The most valuable data can be found in the Contact Tracing interviews in infected and expose people. Early detection, reporting and testing needs to leads to quick self isolation in quarantine i can help shut down the spread of the virus faster than any other method. But only if it is resourced sufficiently and executed well. The phone calls the Contact Tracers make are often not answered as most people do not pick up from unknown numbers these days. When the Contact Trace or just reach a potential case, they have to make a decision about whether to ask the person to quarantine based on what they learn about the persons risks during that conversation. Without quick information from the infected or exposed, the virus is quietly spreading. When exposure notification apps provide the way to use sole phone data to detect, after the fact, whether you are near someone who later tested positive for covid19 by notifying you and informing you of next steps. These new apps offer a way to help Contact Tracing scale with less effort, more accuracy and more coverage than it is otherwise possible. There are two ways that leads to do this. The first is using gps information logs to compare where the infected person was relative to everyone else. The first problem with this is that gps locations are not accurate enough, even outdoors, to ensure that someone is really within six feet for ten minutes. The other more serious problem of location data is it contains personally identifiable information that can be impossible to algorithmic remove. I can guess where somebody works and lives, i can easily figure out who that person is. Usually by pulling Additional Data from kermit surely available data surfaces like equifax. Implementations of this method were deployed in the uk, north dakota and utah and did not meet with success for multiple reasons. The biggest one was fear that either Big Government or big tech was tracking anyone who installed it. Next, always on gps location, it has Material Impact on battery life so folks turned it off or on installed it. Finally, without sufficient protections, the data can be used or stolen from others. A better solution is to use Bluetooth Low Energy signals to allow phones to recorded when they are near other phones. And ive implementation can still log tracking but provide protection for privacy. Theyve had countries Health Agencies to build and release apps using this tech. In the United States, they were not delusional enough to assume that a single federal solution could be adopted so they are working with one group or state. Like doctor raz near group, my team is building in the app using this tech and we believe it preserves privacy better and works better than gps solutions. The goal would be to get as many people as possible in the state to download this app. But the dock the challenge is of course even if we get 40 installed uniformly across the group, we will only have 16 of exposures