Jaharis Podcast on Health & IP

Jaharis Podcast on Health & IP


Immunity Passports and Contact Tracing Surveillance

May 29, 2021

Contact tracing apps and immunity passports are being used for the first time in human history. This Article assesses their risk tradeoffs from a private and regulatory law perspective, with special attention to privacy and inequality. The Article begins by developing a surveillance-based taxonomy of contact tracing apps and immunity passports. Next, it demonstrates how these apps magnify the problems and limits of consent and anonymization, two important privacy guarantees. It then explores how the interplay of trust and error can pose threats to health and business efficacy, how they raise issues of liability, and how to address them. It then discusses the prospect that these apps cause discrimination and magnify existing inequalities. Underpinning the aforementioned considerations is a balancing assessment that aims to guide policy-makers, judges, employers, and individuals in making difficult containment decisions.