| Knowledge-Net for a Better World |
July 2020 |
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Corona-Tracking and Privacy:
The Opposite Approaches of South Korea and Japan
Maiko Ichihara
Graduate School of Law, Hitotsubashi University |
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| "COVID-19 IT tracking system: An effective countermeasure or a cause of privacy concern?" |
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments all around the world have come up with various countermeasures to track and flatten the curve of the virus. Professor Maiko Ichihara from the Hitotusubashi University’s Graduate School of Law looks at IT-based tracking methods as one of these countermeasures, which have been widely used in countries including China, Singapore, and Malaysia but gained the most attention for its use in South Korea. In this paper, she analyzes the effectiveness of the South Korean government’s tracking system with regard to the reduced time required for data collection and analysis. But in doing so, she also raises possible concerns related to privacy breaches due to the sources the government uses to collect the data of COVID-19 patients. She also compares South Korea’s technology with Japan’s less invasive tracking app, COCOA, which relies on Bluetooth to detect devices that are in the vicinity of confirmed patients. While it is based on the user’s own initiative to download and use the app themselves, it lessens the effectiveness of the system. Professor Ichihara concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the importance of "preserving privacy and freedom both online and offline."  |
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