Four details:
1. The Public Health Emergency Privacy Act would ban the use of personal health data from contact tracing apps for efforts including prohibiting voting or limiting housing, education and employment opportunities.
2. The bill would also require tech companies to delete health data they gather after the pandemic is over and for organizations collecting the data to implement stronger data security practices and generate regular reports on to examine how the tools used to collect health data affect civil rights.
3. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.; Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.; Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.; and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., introduced the legislation.
4. In a Jan. 28 news release, Mr. Warner explained his reasoning for supporting the bill and tied it to the increasing amount of data that is being collected as more COVID-19 vaccines are administered to Americans, saying that he feared that without new privacy protections for health data, “creeping privacy violations and discriminatory uses of health data could become the new status quo in health care and public health.”
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