Privacy in time of a pandemic

Abstract

In December 2019, the world was struck by the unprecedented medical uncertainty that we now know as COVID-19, forcing many people into quarantine conditions. While the physiological impact of the pandemic is serious, this paper explores how privacy has been affected by COVID-19. In this paper, we explore the ways the ongoing pandemic has affected privacy ranging from the changes in privacy policy and regulation, through use of personal data for contact tracing and privacy in the technologies that have taken centre stage as we all work from home. The articles cited in this paper form an empirical basis of the observations we make. We use the information available to us to analyse the privacy concerns and draw conclusions.