The COVID-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity for states to undergo total digitalization, which carries significant gravitas for people’s personal rights. States previously did not have an opportunity to rapidly deploy digitization to help tackle pandemics like the Swine Flu in 2009. On one hand, the digital era gave countries an additional instrument in fighting the pandemic. On the other hand, it provided totalitarian states with justification to violate the privacy rights of citizens. Without a doubt, there is a great temptation for governments to abuse their new digital powers. Given the COVID crisis, the line between using digitization to fight the virus and violating individual rights has been blurred. How do governments draw these lines in the digital world? How are they regulated in international space? And how does Ukraine manage this balance of protecting personal data with using data to tackle the pandemic?
OP-ED
Olena Makarenko: Ukraine is gathering personal data. How safe is that?
A girl wearing a face mask, amid concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, speaks on the phone in Kyiv, on April 9, 2020.
