François Chung, Ph.D.

Fujitsu project @Brussels, Belgium (2020). In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the development of contact tracing applications to help track and stop the spread of the coronavirus, Trends organized an online debate around technology and privacy entitled: “Does saying yes to technology mean saying no to ethics and privacy?”. The debate has been published as an article in Trends, which is a Flemish financial-economic magazine presenting analyses of current economic, political and social news.

Participants in this debate, who are experts in technology, ethics, privacy or legislation, are representing the following organizations:

• Atos;
• Everest Law;
• Fujitsu;
• Icapps;
• Ministry of Privacy;
• Nutanix;
• Privaco;
• SiriusLegal;
• Universiteit Gent.

The main topics of discussion around this debate are as follows:

• Should a contact tracing application be considered as a Pandora's box whose consequences cannot be estimated?
• Is GDPR sufficient as a security mechanism? Or do we need to develop a clearer framework to regulate the potential misuse of technology?
• To what extent does fragmentation, at political, geographic or economic level, hinder the efficiency of contact tracing applications requiring a global reach to be efficient?
• Who decides what can be allowed with the possibilities offered by the technology? And how can we enforce that?
• What is the correct mechanism to determine when a technology is needed? And when can a market be considered as ready?

As a Digital Business Analyst representing Fujitsu for this debate, I shared Fujitsu’s vision and values regarding technology and privacy in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic, with topics such as working from home (technologies and benefits), extending the legal framework, including GDPR, to regulate Artificial Intelligence and building a human centric future with ethical technology. The debate has been published as an article in Trends on 13th August 2020.

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