Workshop Summary

Privacy and civil liberties are increasingly a point of inflection as efforts to collect and use population data to contain, mitigate and fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus are launched. FPF’s invite-only informal Privacy Pandemic: Corporate Data Sharing Workshop will address issues arising out of the quest to preserve our civil liberties and democratic values while allowing for ethical uses of data in times of crisis. Governments, researchers and healthcare institutions are seeking to obtain and deploy data collected from phones, transportation systems, credit cards, websites and more to trace the spread of illness, enforce travel and movement restrictions, deliver emergency supplies and search for vaccines and cures. Companies must consider legal and ethical concerns, consumer and media perceptions, accuracy, bias, and the challenges of global regulatory requirements. In this workshop, leading experts examine the issues that organizations are grappling with during this crisis.

Event Format

During this workshop, we will hear from a number of experts on data governance and leveraging data in times of crisis, and we hope to facilitate a conversation with participants around key questions:

Key Questions

What are the most effective strategies to support public health measures, without allowing initiatives to infringe on individuals’ civil liberties?

How do we harness the benefits of potentially invasive technologies (location tracking, facial recognition, temperature monitoring and more) while mitigating ethical and privacy risks?

What are the best data hygiene measures for preserving privacy during times of crisis, while also ensuring the usefulness of sensitive data (including location and health information)?

What can this informal group do in the short to medium term to support the strategies and measures identified?

Agenda

11:00 – 11:10 am - Introduction to Discussion: Jules Polonetsky and Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna

11:10 – 11:15 am - Introductions of all participants

11:15am – 12:00pm - Session One: Data Sharing and Use in Times of Crisis

During this session, we will center our conversation around the benefits and challenges of corporate data sharing with researchers, government agencies, and more.

Session One Discussants:

Mila Romanoff – Data Policy and Governance Lead, UN Global Pulse

JoAnn Stonier – Chief Data Officer at Mastercard

Dr. Caroline Buckee – Associate Professor of Epidemiology, and Associate Director of the Centre for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Christian D'Cunha – DG Connect, Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Unit of the European Commission

Dr. Paul Root Wolpe – Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, Former NASA Senior Bioethicist

Laura McGorman – Policy Lead, Facebook’s Data for Good Team

12:00 – 12:45pm - Session Two: Privacy and Civil Liberties Protective Measures

During this session, we will focus on how to best mitigate associated risks, including privacy and ethical safeguards.

Session Two Discussants:

Amy O’Hara – Director, Georgetown Federal Statistical Research Data Center

Al Gidari – Consulting Director of Privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Dr. Khaled El Emam – CEO and cofounder of Replica Analytics Ltd.

Professor Christopher Kuner – Co-Chair of the Brussels Privacy Hub at the Vrije Universiteit of Brussels (VUB)

Ryan Calo – Professor at the University of Washington School of Law

Sean McDonald – CEO of FrontlineSMS

FPF workshops are not recorded, please follow the Chatham House Rule.

This event is invite-only, if you are unable to attend but would like to send a representative in your place, please let Nicole Sanchez know at nsanchez@fpf.org.

Zoom details will be shared with all registered guests no later than March 25.

Privacy & Pandemics: Corporate Data Sharing Workshop