Online Seminar on COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps in the U.S., EU and Asia

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The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung and the Center for Democracy and Technology hosted a online seminar on COVID-19 contact-tracing apps in the U.S., the EU, and Asia on Wednesday, June 10th at 9am ET.

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Logos of Heinrich Boell Stiftung Washington, DC and the Center for Democracy and Technology

The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung and the Center for Democracy & Technology hosted a online seminar on COVID-19 contact-tracing apps in the U.S., the EU, and Asia on Wednesday, June 10th at 9am ET.

This is the inaugural online seminar for the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s Tech and COVID-19 online seminar series and the third installment of CDT’s online seminar series on Tech Policy Responses to COVID-19.

Online Seminar on COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps in the U.S., EU and Asia - Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Washington, DC

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Speakers from all three regions discussed the current debates on best practices to use technology to effectively contact trace while maintaining privacy.

Greg Nojeim, Director of the Freedom, Security and Technology Project at CDT, gave an overview of the introduction of decentralized Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing technology based on the Apple/Google’s API, and described some approaches to contact tracing in the U.S.

Dev Lewis, Fellow and Program Lead at Digital Asia Hub, explained the lessons learned from Singapore’s experience with Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing and how its experience differed from more intrusive approaches used in China and India.

Frederike Kaltheuner, Tech Policy Fellow at the Mozilla Foundation, clarified the debates on use of centralized vs. decentralized contact-tracing apps in Europe, as well as the problems that arise for apps that rely on centralized data storage with which the Google/Apple API can’t be used.

Moderator: Sabine Muscat, Program Director Technology and Digital Policy at the Heinrich Boell Foundation Washington, DC.

The speakers responded to each other and took questions from the audience at the end of the presentation.

You can also watch the online seminar directly on YouTube here.