Coronavirus apps must keep Big Brother at bay, EU privacy chiefs warn

A man holds a mobile phone showing Norway's National Institute of Public Health new mobile app for infection tracking, in Oslo, Norway. Mobile apps should be voluntary, approved by national health authorities, preserve users’ privacy and should be dismantled as soon as they are no longer needed, the European Commission said in its own guidelines this month. — AP

Europe’s data privacy watchdogs warned that virus-tracking technologies must not be allowed to morph into dystopian snooping on citizens in the wake of the pandemic.

Technologies should be used to "empower, rather than to control, stigmatize, or repress individuals”, the EU group of data protection authorities said in guidelines, published on Wednesday, which generally support the use of apps to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.