PUBLICATION

Privacy & Covid-19

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 current pandemic. We hope to contribute to the global policy and research discourse for an efficient and human rights compliant handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

By Andreu Wilson; Daniel Becker; Natália Brigagão; Victor Silveira; Vinícius Alvarez; Alina Škiljić; Mikko Rudanko; Cian Henry; Matthew Nuding; Merel van Gils; Dr. jur. Ma. Angela Leonor Aguinaldo, J.D., LL.M

February 19,  2021

Data is crucial in the fight against the pandemic but not unchecked

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 efficiently tackling the pandemic and forecasting the spread of the virus, to assess the resources of health care systems and to evaluate the efficacy of policies restricting the movement of individuals.

While contact-tracing technologies can be useful to limit the spread of the virus, if left unchecked, they can also be misused for extensive collection and sharing of personal data, mass surveillance, limiting individual freedoms and challenging democratic governance.

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. Measures implemented to manage the current emergency and the underlying decision-making process should be appropriately documented. Transparency and effective communication are not solely dictated by data protection objectives. They are crucial for establishing public trust in the emergency measures taken and a broad compliance hereto as a requisite for effective democratic governance.

Governments, in multistakeholder consultations, must therefore 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.

With the following publication, we hope to contribute to the global policy and research discourse for an efficient and human rights compliant handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I would personally like to wholeheartedly thank our authors for shedding light in the measures of their respective jurisdictions. Special thanks to Ruby Rosselle Tugade and Raphael Lorenzo A. Pangalangan for their outstanding work in managing and coordinating an international team of editors, without whom this result would not have been possible.

Of course, we all at our institute could not be prouder since we are presenting you our very first publication.

Foreword by Konstantinos Tsakiliotis