People across the world are currently facing an unprecedented global health emergency due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Technology, such as apps, can and should play an important role during this effort to save lives, including by spreading public health messages and increasing access to health care. However, in the name of combatting the disease, some governments are rushing to expand their use of surveillance technologies to track individuals and even entire populations. In this lecture, Koning will discuss this development in the light of the Declaration of Human Rights. At stake is not just privacy, but discrimination as well.

Merel Koning is the senior policy officer on human rights and technology at Amnesty International in the Netherlands. Prior to this position, she was an academic researcher and consultant in the field of data protection, human rights law and technology.