GOP senator ramps up pressure on Apple, Google

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent letters to Apple and Google on Tuesday urging the tech giants to make their CEOs personally liable for data collected in their joint coronavirus contact-tracing project.

The two tech giants announced earlier this month that they would be creating a voluntary contact-tracing network using Bluetooth Low Energy transmissions.

The software would use the signals to track individuals that participants who have opted-in to the program have been in contact with, and then notify those people if they’ve come near someone who tests positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Privacy alarm: Critics have raised concerns about potential risks to privacy from the project.

Apple and Google have included many checks for those concerns, but for Hawley those are not enough.

Hawley’s message: “If you seek to assure the public, make your stake in this project personal,” he wrote to Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai. “Make a commitment that you and other executives will be personally liable if you stop protecting privacy, such as by granting advertising companies access to the interface once the pandemic is over.”