In times of pandemic, privacy at risk in tech-driven offices
WASHINGTON: People returning to work following the pandemic will find an array of tech-infused gadgetry to improve workplace safety, but which could pose risks for long-term personal and medical privacy.
Temperature checks, distance monitors, digital “passports”, wellness surveys and robotic disinfection systems are being deployed in many workplaces seeking to reopen.
Tech giants are offering solutions that include computer vision detection of vital signs to wearables which can offer early indications of the onset of Covid-19 and apps that keep track of health metrics. A large coalition of tech firms and health organisations are working on a digital vaccination certificate, which can be used on phones to show evidence of inoculation.
With these systems, employees may face screenings even as they enter a building lobby, and monitoring in elevators, hallways and at the workplace.
The monitoring “blurs the line between people’s workplace and personal lives,” said Darrell
West, a Brookings Institution vice-president with the think tank’s Center for Technology Innovation. “It erodes longstanding medical privacy protections for many different workers.”
A report last year by the consumer activist group Public Citizen identified 50 apps and technologies released during the pandemic “marketed as workplace surveillance tools to combat Covid-19”.
The report said some systems go so far as identifying people who may not spend enough time in front of a sink to note inadequate hand-washing.