In the best of times, a new US president has a lot on his plate. But these times are not the best — they are extraordinarily challenging. And while the new administration has a lot of priorities — getting the pandemic under control, stabilizing the economy, dealing with record unemployment, and more — it also needs to look at an issue that has ballooned in the last year and set legislators, companies, and even many citizens on edge: data privacy.
Privacy during a pandemic is a tricky balancing act. On one side, personal data is being used to benefit public health — for contract tracing, self-reporting, and online screening tests, and more people are open to disclosing and sharing information. Personal data is also being distributed and used in new ways. For example, the government is working with Verily, a Google…
