A national privacy law would have helped the US deal with COVID-19, lawmakers say
US lawmakers have argued back and forth for years on what a federal data privacy law should look like. Before they were able to pass any regulations, however, the COVID-19 pandemic stormed in and highlighted why data privacy is a necessity in public health.
Technology regulators testified to Congress on Wednesday at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the need for a federal data privacy law. It was the first hearing focused on data privacy regulations since the coronavirus outbreak changed everything, from how students attend school to how court hearings happen.
You might not think of data privacy as a priority when you're talking about an infectious disease that's killed nearly 1 million people worldwide, but it plays a big role in how governments can effectively respond to the public health crisis.
Contact tracing -- the act of getting information from patients about who they've been in touch with to slow the spread of a disease -- is a proven method for dealing with outbreaks. But without data privacy laws to ensure that this information is protected from abuse, and given Silicon Valley's track record of privacy violations, trust has remained low for contact tracers.
https://www.cnet.com/health/a-national-privacy-bill-really-would-have-helped-the-us-deal-with-covid-19/?ftag=CAD-04-10abi6g&bhid=24447454298893839703959737945916&mid=13069077&cid=534320049
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