Norton Rose Fulbright survey examines data privacy issues with COVID-19 contact tracing

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright today launched its survey analysing regulatory and policy issues applicable to COVID-19 contact tracing and related tracking technology across 18 jurisdictions.

The global survey explores key issues across Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Indonesia, Russia, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, The Netherlands, Turkey, UAE, UK and US, including:

• How are governments using technology to monitor and control the spread of COVID-19?
• What are the major privacy concerns in relation to the utilisation of apps by both governments and private sector organisations?
• How will the apps collect data and how is the data stored used and shared.

The real-time survey underscores wide divergences in national approaches and highlights key data privacy risks presented by the use of technology to trace COVID-19 infections. In many of the jurisdictions that Norton Rose Fulbright analysed, national authorities have studied the technology and looked at balancing the risk of intruding on their citizens’ privacy against the public health and community benefits that that the use COVID-19 tracing apps may bring.

Hong Kong-based partner Anna Gamvros, who heads Norton Rose Fulbright’s Asia Pacific cyber risk practice, commented:

“A clear tension exists between the use of technology as an exit strategy for lockdown and the preservation of data privacy. The way in which individuals’ data is collected and stored is central to this debate. The use of apps which involve the creation of centralised databases may present additional privacy and cybersecurity risks. This debate around the use of apps will become more pronounced if, for example, employers decide to require employees to use contact tracing technologies before returning the office as a measure to ensure the health and safety of their workforce.”

Norton Rose Fulbright helps clients manage legal risks related to cybersecurity, privacy, data governance, eDiscovery, information technology, eCommerce and intellectual property. Read the Norton Rose Fulbright Data Protection Report for analysis of emerging privacy, data protection and cybersecurity issues.