Contact Tracing and Its Approach to Privacy Under Europe and Canada's Privacy Laws

Abstract

2020 can be described as COVID-19, given that the entire year was spent battling and trying to contain the spread of this new strain of the SARS virus, a situation declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization. News about the discovery and effectiveness of the COVID vaccine emerged this month, bringing some hope to the end of the pandemic. Before the vaccine discovery, control measures such as prevention, testing, and tracing were adopted to control the spread of the virus. This paper discusses privacy and data protection concerns surrounding contact tracing and the impact of the adoption of immunity certificates on marginalized and vulnerable communities.

Keywords: contact tracing, COVID-19, privacy, surveillance, PIPEDA, GDPR