In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, 28 April, Alessandra Pierucci, who chairs the ‘Committee of the Council of Europe’s Convention 108 on data protection’, and Jean-Philippe Walter, who serves as Data Protection Commissioner of the Council of Europe, warn against the negative effects of using digital contact tracing applications in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.
Their aim is “to contribute to the reflections currently underway in many countries” by reiterating that “wherever such solutions are chosen, strict legal and technical safeguards need to be in place to mitigate the risks to the protection of personal data and privacy”. They note that these mobile applications can recreate chains of infection with a rapidity that matches that of the virus, but if they are deployed, they will need to be deployed on a voluntary basis and for a limited period of time. Moreover, they should have “safeguards ‘by design’ to prevent or minimise risks, e.g. to ensure that location data of individuals are not used, that no direct identification is possible or that re-identification is prevented”.
“The Covid-19 pandemic creates unprecedented common challenges which require our greatest commitment, and caution”, conclude Alessandra Pierucci and Jean Philippe Walter. Digital contact tracing involves “predictable societal and legal risks” that cannot be overlooked before “implementing such population-wide measures”. And to do so, especially as the pandemic knows no borders, the necessary interoperability between national systems can only be achieved under strict security conditions for data transfer.
See the joint statement: https://bit.ly/2YcQKyd (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)