I think the article should more clearly distinguish between approaches that indeed gather lots of unnecessary data (that is often of questionable importance) vs

I think the article should more clearly distinguish between approaches that indeed gather lots of unnecessary data (that is often of questionable importance) vs. more decentralised (e.g. bluetooth based) approaches that can help with contact tracing while still allowing to be implemented with privacy concerns in mind. Also, (as a non-American) I think the patriot act is a horrible thing, but I also think that in particular, the threat of terrorism has always been massively overstated (and even if not, many of the subsequent changes e.g. in airport security, are terribly ineffective). By contrast, I think that Coronavirus is a very serious threat and a recent study does seem to indicate that app-based contact tracing solutions could really help. I'll repeat that it's possible to do this in a privacy-conscious manner and it really should be done like that (not just because otherwise people will refuse to use it).