To combat the Covid-19 pandemic, flattening the curve of infection as far as possible is of utmost importance. This is achieved by slowing the spread of the virus that causes the disease, distributing the number of new infected cases over a longer period of time to remain within the capacity of the healthcare system. Countries, such as Israel, which have been showing some success in slowing the rate of increase of community transmission have generally created infrastructure to enable pre-emptive contact tracing. For example, TraceTogether functions on a proximity basis, allowing the public health authorities to retrieve the phone numbers of those persons who have been in close contact with a confirmed case. While necessary, pre-emptive contact tracing has the potential to be misused. For users to repose trust in the public health authorities’ use of such pre-emptive contact-tracing measures, users must be given assurances that any data retrieved by the public health authorities would be for the sole bona fide use of pandemic control and that users retain ultimate control over the use of any such data.... Continue Reading