Daniel Felz, Amy Mushahwar, David Keating, James Harvey and Kimberly Peretti of Alston & Bird write:
Governments are increasingly seeking to leverage consumer geolocation data collected by industry as a tool to assist with fighting the spread of COVID-19. Location data can be of significant value to public health models trying to understand the efficacy of self-quarantine orders, what areas could be exposed to heightened risk, and how the virus has propagated.
Of course, using, sharing, or making location data available raises significant privacy issues and concerns of potential government overreach. Different nations have responded by taking different approaches. This blog post briefly summarizes the state of how the United States and other leading nations are approaching leveraging location data to fight COVID-19. Given the urgency of this matter, privacy-protective jurisdictions such as Germany, Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom have already found methods – some of which have already been approved by privacy regulators – for leveraging mobile location data in the fight against COVID.
Read more on Privacy & Cybersecurity Blog.