This month, Australia’s health minister publicly chastised a doctor whom she accused of treating patients while experiencing symptoms of the virus — essentially outing him by naming the small clinic in Victoria where he worked with a handful of other physicians.
The health provider, who tested positive for the coronavirus, responded with a Facebook post saying the minister had incorrectly characterized his actions for political gain and demanded an apology.
“That could extend to anyone, to suddenly have the status of your health blasted out to thousands or potentially millions of people,” said Chris Gilliard, an independent privacy scholar based in the Detroit area. “It’s a very strange thing to do because, in the alleged interest of public health, you are actually endangering people.”
But in emergencies like pandemics, privacy must be weighed against other considerations, like saving lives, said Mila Romanoff, data and governance lead for United Nations Global Pulse, a U.N. program that has studied using data to improve emergency responses to epidemics like Ebola and dengue fever.
“We need to have a framework that would allow companies and public authorities to cooperate, to enable proper response for the public good,” Ms. Romanoff said. To reduce the risk that coronavirus surveillance efforts might violate people’s privacy, she said, governments and companies should limit the collection and use of data to only what is needed. “The challenge is,” she added, “how much data is enough?”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/coronavirus-surveillance-tracking-privacy.html
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