The American Civil Liberties Union issued a warning Tuesday against using temperature-sensing guns and thermal cameras to check for coronavirus, calling the measures inaccurate, ineffective and intrusive, The New York Times reports.
Many industries are conducting screenings to see if employees or guests have fevers, one of the signs of coronavirus, before they enter businesses.
But the civil liberties group is warning that the thermal cameras and thermometer guns can give people a false sense of security and cause them to not practice other measures like wearing masks or social distancing.
The 8-page report, “Temperature Screening and Civil Liberties During an Epidemic,” also warns the screenings could pave the way for new permanent forms of surveillance and social control.
"There's a lot of reason to doubt that temperature checks will help stop the spread of COVID-19, and they should not be deployed unless public health experts say conclusively that they will help," the report states.
The report brings attention to infrared temperature-screening guns. It states they can be unreliable because they only measure skin temperature, while oral thermometers calculate core body temperature. The report states the guns provide a superficial measure and can show spikes if a person is sunburned or has just come inside from outside. It also called attention to inaccuracies from thermal camera readings.
But even if the tools worked perfectly, the report states the checks could miss infected people who do not have a fever.
“Nobody should imagine that blanketing our public spaces with thermal sensors is going to serve as any kind of effective automated ‘COVID detection network' or that this technology is likely to contribute significantly to stemming the spread of the virus,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the ACLU wrote in the report.
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