Tech companies, governments, and international agencies have all announced measures to help contain the spread of the COVID-19, otherwise known as the Coronavirus.
Some of these measures impose severe restrictions on people’s freedoms, including to their privacy and other human rights. Unprecedented levels of surveillance, data exploitation, and misinformation are being tested across the world.
Many of those measures are based on extraordinary powers, only to be used temporarily in emergencies. Others use exemptions in data protection laws to share data.
Some may be effective and based on advice from epidemiologists, others will not be. But all of them must be temporary, necessary, and proportionate.
It is essential to keep track of them. When the pandemic is over, such extraordinary measures must be put to an end and held to account.
This page will be updated as measures are reported.
This is a collective project led by PI alongside its global Network. But we also need your help. If you know of an example we can add and track, please contact us with an open source link, at https://privacyinternational.org/contact.
Quarantining is a significant interference with rights, which is why it is only recommended to be done under the advisement of health professionals. Using tech and data to do this can be particularly problematic.
Considering the billions of people who have smart phones generally use apps on these devices, it's possible to reach people and draw extensive data from their devices.
Telecommunications firms, including mobile operators, have extensive data on their customers, including location and contact data -- they and governments are keen to exploit this data.
