Join Us on June 25 for a Webinar on Regulating the Use of Technology to Combat COVID-19

Currently, there is no known cure or vaccine for COVID-19. Countries therefore have to find other ways to control and mitigate the spread of this infectious disease in order to break the chain of human-to-human transmission. Many governments have turned to electronic measures to provide information to individuals about the COVID-19 pandemic, check symptoms,trace contacts of infected persons, identify “hot spots,” and track compliance with confinement measures and stay-at-home orders. Dedicated coronavirus apps that are downloaded to an individual’s mobile phone, the use of anonymized mobility data, and creating electronic databases are the most common measures. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends using digital proximity tracking only as a supplement to other measures such as increased testing and manual contact tracing.

Please join us on June 25, 2020, at 2pm for the webinar “Regulating the Use of Technology to Combat COVID-19,” which will discuss legislation in foreign countries that allows using “electronic means” to assess general adherence to confinement measures and to stop the spread of COVID-19. This discussion is based on research undertaken by the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress. The webinar will highlight the different approaches that countries have taken with regard to location tracking and contact tracing and to addressing privacy and data protection concerns.

The webinar will be presented by Jenny Gesley, a foreign law specialist at the Global Legal Research Directorate at the Law Library of Congress. Jenny holds a Master of Laws from the University of Minnesota Law School, a Juris Doctor equivalent from the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany, and a doctorate in law. Her doctoral dissertation on “Financial Market Supervision in the United States: National Developments and International Standards” (in German) was awarded the Baker & McKenzie Award in 2015. Dr. Gesley is admitted to the New York State bar and is qualified to practice law in Germany.

To register for the webinar, please click here or call (202) 707-5080.