Digital mapping of coronavirus contacts will have key role in lifting Europe’s lockdown, says Commission –
Summary
Last week the Commission made a similar call for a common approach to data and apps for fighting the coronavirus, emphasizing the need for technical measures to be taken to ensure that citizens’ rights and freedoms aren’t torched in the scramble for a tech fix. That’s why the Commission has drawn up a catalogue of guidelines, criteria and measures that provide a basis for thoughtful action,” said EC president Ursula von der Leyen, commenting on the full roadmap in a statement. Harmonized data gathering and sharing by public health authorities — “on the spread of the virus, the characteristics of infected and recovered persons and their potential direct contacts” — is another key plank of the plan for lifting coronavirus restrictions on citizens within the 27 Member State bloc. Earlier this week Apple and Google announced a collaboration around coronavirus contracts tracing — throwing their weight behind a privacy-sensitive decentralized approach to proximity tracking that would see ephemeral IDs processed locally on devices, rather than being continually uploaded and held on a central server. However governments in the region are working on a variety of apps and approaches for coronavirus contacts tracing that don’t all look as if they will check a ‘rights respecting’ box… In a video address last week, Europe’s lead privacy regulator, the EDPS, intervened to call for a “panEuropean model ‘COVID-19 mobile application’, coordinated at EU level” — in light of varied tech efforts by Member States which involve the processing of personal data for a claimed public health purpose.