We Deserve Transparency And Accountability From COVID Tracing Apps, And Sen. Kevin Thomas Of New York Wants To Make That Happen

It has become a matter of life and death that we discover ways to monitor and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 globally. This argument is undeniable, but the tactics as to how to make it happen are still up for debate. The problem, as Brittany Kaiser, Co-Founder of the Own Your Data Foundation and author of Targeted, laid out last week in an interview with Bloomberg is that “many of the big companies and governments that are implementing contact tracing apps don’t have a great history of respecting data protection and privacy.” Yet they are moving forward, full steam ahead, without changing any of their policies in regards to how data should be recognized or respected as a private asset of the individual creating it.

Many may say that we do have privacy legislation that has been put into place, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Since the GDPR in 2018 we’ve seen an abundance of privacy legislation argued, proposed, and put into law across the world. Although these new laws represent progress, every piece of legislation fails to resolve two major fundamental aspects—accessibility and accountability. New York State Senator Kevin Thomas wants to be the first in the world to change that.

Read the full story on Forbes.com.