Securing Privacy During a World Health Emergency: Exploring How to Create a Balance Between the Need to Save the World and People’s Right to Privacy

Many people describe 2020 as the year the world gave up on privacy. It was the year of the COVID-19 pandemic when countries all over the world shutdown. It was the year we saw many of these countries anxiously turning to technology (and the data it generated) for answers. In detail, many governments churned out mobile technologies to track and trace their citizens to try to understand and control the spread of the virus. Such applications with their location tracking raised serious privacy concerns, however, governments were desperate. Moreover, it was the year that everyone went online; locked up in their homes, people shopped, worked, studied and socialised online. This also generated a new wave of privacy and security risks, however, people were also desperate to hang onto any bit of normality that they could salvage. Indeed, it is an interesting narrative: the issue of securing privacy rights during a world health emergency. This chapter will give a glimpse into the pre-COVID-19 data protection environment before discussing some of the main changes to data brought about by COVID-19. Now, in the aftermath of the pandemic, the chapter will reflect on some of the challenges to data protection that society still faces. Finally, envisioning a future, the authors will consider some possible solutions to ensure an ethically safe yet prosperous technological data enhanced existence.