Some companies that specialize in tracking devices are aggressively marketing their products as a solution to help enforce social distancing in the workplace amid the coronavirus pandemic, but human rights advocates have grave concerns about the technology and executives in the promotional products industry told Counselor they’d be loath to use it in their workplaces.

Maryland-based AiRISTA Flow bills itself as a company that specializes in “Real-Time Location Services” (RTLS). It recently announced the release of the AiRISTA Flow Social Distancing and Contact Tracing Solution, a wireless device employees would wear as a wrist strap, key fob or around the neck.

Preparing your workplace for a safe return doesn't need to be challenging. Help protect employees from unavoidable interactions while meeting @CDCgov social distancing guidelines with an affordable BLE contact tracing solution. https://t.co/yivBS8BEpL #returntowork

— AiRISTA Flow (@AiRISTA_Flow) May 5, 2020

When people come within 6 feet of each other, the device chirps and sends a record of the contact to AiRISTA’s cloud-based software system. Not only would the device provide a list of social distancing violators, it would also “double as a detailed record of workplace social interactions,” enabling employers to essentially monitor employees’ every move, The Intercept notes.

Similarly, Boston-based Redpoint Positioning Corporation is an RTLS company that began positioning its product as a solution for enforcement of workplace social distancing in late April. Redpoint’s tech uses tags and ultra-wideband signals to track the location of people and equipment, “even in complex industrial environments,” the company says. Redpoint says its tags alert wearers – employees – if they are violating social distancing parameters.

As with AiRISTA Flow’s product, Redpoint’s system creates records of movements and interactions. It can be used, the company says, to “geo-fence cleaning stations and track employees’ entry and time spent in these areas to enforce handwashing or equipment cleaning protocols.”

surveillance firm SuperCom is selling electronic ankle bracelets typically reserved for criminals as a quarantine enforcement "solution"—already being used in "pilot programs" in two countries https://t.co/eRR0ocSitz pic.twitter.com/v0pNUxYrtI

— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) May 25, 2020

Promo’s Reaction to Tracking Devices in the Workplace
As societal lockdown measures tied to COVID-19 ease, companies in the $25.8 billion promotional products industry are starting to return to offices, print shops, and production facilities. Would they consider using tracking devices of the kind AiRISTA Flow and Redpoint are offering to enforce social distancing on the job?

For some, the answer is a hard “no.”

These industry pros see the technology as draconian and evocative of a dystopian police state.

“We would never use this,” says Jeremy Picker, co-founder and CEO of Denver-based promo distributorship AMB3R (asi/590243). “An animal shocking collar isn’t the solution to social distancing and stopping the spread of the virus. Flexibility, accountability and common sense are the solutions.”

Jeremy Picker, AMB3R

Meanwhile, Howard Potter believes the tracking devices impinge on personal freedom and basic human rights. As importantly, the CEO of Utica, NY-based A&P Master Images (asi/102019) doesn’t think they’d be effective in stopping viral spread. For example: Even if the devices do aid in enforcing social distancing on the job, they’re not going to stop workers from socializing after work hours and potentially coming in close proximity then, Potter notes.

“I think with technology, common sense, science and basic improved human cleanliness practices by all in and out of the workplaces, we can work through this as a team and build our country back up to be stronger than ever, but living in fear and creating no social contact is not the answer and only weakens us from the inside out as people and a country,” Potter says.

Some promo executives say they see the value of tracking devices in certain workplace settings. Kathy Finnerty Thomas says she would not have office or production staff at her Arizona-based distributorship Stowebridge Promotion Group (asi/337500) wear tracking tags, but she believes the devices could be useful elsewhere.

Kathy Finnerty Thomas, Stowebridge Promotion Group

“We have a pretty smartly designed office and production facility that does keep most people separated,” Finnerty Thomas says. “As we returned to the office, we vowed to each other to stay safe and I’m confident in that. However, these devices might be very helpful in some of the more dangerous workplaces. Businesses such as meat packing plants really could benefit from some help both in reminding people to provide distance as well as being able to quickly track who they had been in contact with.”

Through its family of brands, Top 40 supplier HPG (asi/61966) has facilities across the U.S. and in Canada. CEO Chris Anderson says tracking devices aren’t in the cards for any of those locations. Instead, HPG is investing in sanitizing equipment, such as UV wands and backpack disinfectant applicators, as well as biometric screening equipment, which reveals when employees have entered and exited a facility and their body temperature at the time of passing through the entrance point. HPG is also reconfiguring workstations to facilitate social distancing.

“Rather than electronically monitoring or tracking employees’ physical location in our facilities throughout the workday with its accompanying ethical and morale concerns, we have invested in multilingual signage that provides clear guidelines, and instructions, to promote employee understanding,” says Anderson. “We have found that such visual communication tools are very effective in establishing — and reinforcing — positive workplace behavior, while remaining consistent with our mission, vision and values.”

Still, there are willing adopters of tracking devices for the purposes of enforcing workplace social distancing. Redpoint says it has “many clients in China.” One client, a mobile data center in China, used the tech to “enforce new safety measures to reduce the risk to their employees and keep their facility open.”

SuperCom, an Israeli security/surveillance company that has made tracking tech for use on incarcerated and convicted people, including those on house arrest, has positioned its “PureCare” product as a “quarantine and isolation solution” for government agencies that want to enforce quarantine/social distancing.

SuperCom executive Ordan Trabelsi talks about the company’s tracking technology.

PureCare, which SuperCom describes as “a non-intrusive patient friendly system that constantly tracks patient location within buildings, vehicles and outside,” is already in use in Central America, according to the company. SuperCom anticipates more governmental interest in its tracking bracelets, as well as a rise in demand from the U.S. prison system, which could use the tech to monitor prisoners released from incarceration due to fear of COVID-19 outbreaks in jails.

It’s unclear the extent to which private industry might be interested in using SuperCom bracelets to monitor employees’ social distancing efforts while on the job. Still, the potential for that – as well as the use of bracelets to track citizens and even released inmates – is deeply concerning to some human rights experts.

Leonard Rubenstein, a human rights attorney and bioethicist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, told The Intercept that he found the “ankle monitor and other tracking methods described [by SuperCom] highly inappropriate and detrimental to a public health response in being unreasonably and unnecessarily coercive, a serious invasion of privacy without any safeguards, and promoting an adversarial relationship to public health authorities when the relationship should be built on trust.”

Meanwhile, Jennifer Granick told The Intercept that SuperCom’s coronavirus-related marketing amounts to painting a public health veneer over the introduction of police technology into society. That’s dangerous because doing so facilitates the normalization of such monitoring technology for medical reasons among the general population, says Granick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in surveillance and cybersecurity. “This should trouble us all,” she says.