The UK government has been challenged on its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance over the "Test and Trace" program being used in England to limit the spread of COVID-19.
"Test and trace," sometimes referred to as "track and trace," is alarming to data privacy advocates and potentially to others who might not have considered the full implications of it to help ease restrictions. Governments all over the world are using a range of approaches to track contacts of individuals who subsequently test positive for the virus. However, a rush to roll out anything of this scale ultimately results in corners being cut. The fact that data privacy legislation has not been given sufficient consideration in the plan of the roll-out is not just a very big corner that has been cut, it's also extremely worrying.
The ability to trace contacts of individuals testing positive for COVID-19 is one of the crucial components to containing the virus as governments continue to ease lockdown restrictions around the world. The way in which test-and-trace can work is causing debate around the globe - either centrally (data uploaded to government server) or distributed (data remains on smartphones until someone reports positive for COVID-19) - as both present significant privacy and security issues.
The UK government has come under fire for launching test-and-trace without sufficient assessment of the impact on the data privacy of the individuals involved, referred to as a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) under the EU (GDPR), which continues to be relevant to the UK as the country leaves the European Union.
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