The corona pandemic isn’t a purely medical issue, it entangles all aspects of human lives, including our privacy, protection and dignity. Recently, the list of passengers who flew in the same flight from France to Nepal with the woman who tested positive, along with the details of the passengers of the same airways has been public. The list includes personal information of the people including their names, Nepali citizenship number and contact number. This breaches the right to privacy of the individuals and is putting them at the risk.
People deliberately found the details and now individuals and online news portals have been sharing them, without the consent of these individuals. This is cyber harassment, also known as ‘Doxing’. It is very insensitive, unethical and against our basic human rights to be protected and violation to our right to privacy. This very action of making their data out is against our constitution. Right to violation of privacy is against UDHR and ICCPR as well. https://privacy.sflc.in/universal/
There are targeted hate speech against the woman who tested positive – slut-shaming and death threats. When a woman is attacked online, we can see how her body and sexuality is under attack. Revealing personal details of people who have tested positive or are potentially suspected of infection of corona virus will cause lifelong harm to them and their families – physical, mental, economic and psycho-social.
Individuals holds right to privacy and Body & Data believes on full control over personal data and information online at all levels, as mentioned in the Feminist principles of the internet. https://feministinternet.org/en/principles
Our twitter thread on the #PrivacyInThePandemic