Mass. ‘Surreptitiously’ Installed COVID-19 App on 1M Phones: Amended Suit
Conspiring with a private company to “hijack” residents’ smartphones by installing a contact-tracing app on their devices without the owners’ knowledge or consent isn’t a tool the Massachusetts Department of Public Health “may lawfully employ in its efforts to combat…
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COVID-19,” alleged six Android users. The users, including Robert Wright, a senior faculty fellow at the American Institute of Economic Research, filed an amended complaint Monday against the department and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Springfield. The defendants’ “brazen disregard” for civil liberties violates the Constitution, “and it must stop now,” it said. A month earlier, the state moved to dismiss the original Nov. 14 lawsuit for failure to state a claim (see 2211250008). To increase the app’s adoption, the state started working with Google in June 2021 to secretly install it on more than a million Android smartphones, it said. When owners discovered and deleted the app, the state would reinstall it on their phones, it said. Even if a user doesn’t opt into the department’s COVID-19 notification system, the app “still causes the mobile device to broadcast and receive Bluetooth signals,” it said. “In sum,” the department installed “spyware” that deliberately tracks and records movement and personal contacts for more than a million smartphones “without their owners’ permission and awareness,” it said. The spyware still resides “on the overwhelming majority of the devices on which it was installed,” it said. At least two dozen other states developed COVID-19 contact-tracing apps using Google’s application programming interface, said the complaint. Most engaged in community outreach, “encouraging their residents to download the apps and voluntarily opt in for contact tracing,” it said. Massachusetts appears to be the only state to “surreptitiously embed” the app on mobile devices, it said.