Combating Covid-19: Challenge for data protection and privacy

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus and has been spread globally since it detected in December 2019. Technology take an essential role to combat the virus, including to do contact tracing as a part of health surveillance. Even the contact tracing is not a new method to combat a virus disease, however the using of technology has robust attention to data protection and privacy. Specific regulation and/or guideline to protect the personal data and privacy on this Covid-19 pandemic is issued by some countries as well as international organization. This research aims to examine how the data protection and privacy is response to technology challenge in the Covid-19 pandemic, including in Indonesia. Using normative legal research, this research finds out that the utilization of technology to fight the Covid-19, that is the Indonesia's official contact tracing, has a legal basis according to the existing regulation and it reflected on the user policy of the apps with some notes. However, future research is required to ensure that the apps is protect the user's personal data and privacy technically and comparing with other countries as well.