Privacy & Covid-19
Privacy & Covid-19
Open Call for Country Reports
We shouldn't have to make a choice between health and privacy
For this, we launch a research project that seeks to collect reports on the legislative and regulatory measures taken in the respective jurisdictions in response to COVID-19 from a human rights and rule of law perspective, with particular regard to privacy rights. The objective of the country reports is to offer an overview of the main, or most problematic, measures, and to highlight “alarm bells” and “best practices” in assessing the state of privacy and data protection amidst the Covid-19 pandemic with a focus on regulatory responses.
Data is crucial in the fight against the pandemic
Governments are taking unprecedented steps to track, trace, contain and mitigate the spread of Covid-19 by resorting to digital technologies and advanced analytics to collect, analyse and share data for front-line responses. Data is essential for analyzing and forecasting the spread of the virus, while also identifying the location and number of new confirmed cases, rates of recoveries and deaths, and the source of new cases. Other than that, governments use data to assess the resources of health care systems and to evaluate the efficacy of policies restricting the movement of individuals.
Open data in the service of research and science
According to UNESCO, the creation of new scientific knowledge to deal with the current pandemic depends on creating an open and level playing field and providing unconditional access and sharing of scientific contents, technologies and processes to the entire scientific community from developed and developing countries alike. Access to verified and peer reviewed data, journal articles and laboratory log books, is thus central to find a cure against the ongoing crisis.
95 %
Even when the personal data is anonymized, recent research
suggests that individuals may still be identified by a limited set of data points – four spatio-temporal points may be enough to uniquely identify 95% of people in a mobile phone database of 1.5 million people and to identify 90% of people in a credit card database of 1 million people.
Masks are for virus prevention
not political suppression
While contact-tracing technologies can be useful as they provide critical information to limit the spread of the virus, but if left unchecked, they can also be used for extensive collection and sharing of personal data, mass surveillance, limiting individual freedoms and challenging democratic governance. Quarantine measures effectively restrict the right to assemble and protest. Governments, in consultation with other stakeholders, must reconcile the risks with the benefits of the data processing while guaranteeing that any extraordinary measures are proportionate to the risks and are implemented with full transparency, accountability and a commitment to immediately cease or reverse exceptional uses of data when the crisis is over.
Infektionsschutzges...
whaat?
Few countries have frameworks in place to support these extraordinary measures in ways that are fast, secure, trustworthy, scalable and in compliance with existing privacy and data protection regulations. As a result, many countries recently have passed or are about to pass legislation specifying how data collection will be restricted to a certain population, for what time, and for what purpose, while others exercise emergency executive powers.
Core principles of data protection should apply
According to the European Data Protection Board, data subjects should receive transparent information on the processing activities that are being carried out and their main features, including the retention period for collected data and the purposes of the processing. The information provided should be easily accessible and provided in clear and plain language. It is important to adopt adequate security measures and confidentiality
policies ensuring that personal data are not disclosed to unauthorized parties. Measures implemented to manage the current emergency and the underlying decision-making process should be appropriately documented.
Submit your country report here
Country Report Proposals of 800 words (max.) may be submitted through this form and will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Co-authored reports are accepted, but we ask you to register the name of your designated contact person.
Any questions?