Law and Privacy in the New Normal: Long-term COVID-19 Containment Strategy

Department: Center for Critical Korean Studies

Date and Time: June 29, 2020 | 4:00 PM-6:00 PM

Event Location: Zoom and Facebook Live

Event Details


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Law and Privacy in the New Normal: Long-term COVID-19 Containment Strategy

Monday, June 29 |  4:00 - 6:00 p.m.  (Pacific Standard Time)

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The Center for Critical Korean Studies and the Korea Law Center at University of California Irvine (“UCI”) and the American Law Center and Cyber Law Center of the Korea University Law School (“KU”) present the webinar Law and Privacy in the New Normal: Long-Term COVID-19 Containment Strategy where experts will discuss the role of law and privacy in long-term COVID-19 containment strategies both in the US and Korea.

Korea is the only major country affected by COVID-19 that has neither closed its borders to any country nor mandated general lockdowns. Korea found success instead by quickly re-activating Section 76-2 of the Infectious Disease Prevention Act legislated in 2015 in response to MERS. This Act allows comprehensive location tracking of patients, suspected patients, contactees, and suspected contactees. Implementation of this contact tracing law has been fully embraced by the public in Korea. Even after the COVID-19 curve has flattened, Korea continues to be proactive with its tracing policy in an effort to maintain its open-border, open-business policy. Korea has legislated a new rule that requires every club and bar customers to electronically scan their QR codes.

Due to privacy concerns, the U.S. has yet to legislate a new law that would allow for an effective location tracking of patients and contactees. Several Senate bills were recently proposed, including the Exposure Notification Privacy Act on June 1, 2020, which attempts to protect consumer privacy while promoting public health, but these are still being debated. As the U.S. re-opens businesses, the evaluation of Korean law from human rights and trans-constitutional perspectives is urgent.

Experts will discuss the role of law in both the United States’ and Korea’s response to the COVID-19, and critically reflect on South Korea’s success story, in the hope of making a contribution to the American legal community.

Speakers

  • Michele Goodwin holds the Chancellor’s Professorship at the University of California, Irvine and is the founder and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and its internationally praised Reproductive Justice Initiative. She is a prolific author and an acclaimed constitutional law scholar and bioethicist. Professor Goodwin has published with Forbes, Salon.com, the L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, Chicago Sun Times, Houston Chronicle, and the Christian Science Monitor among others. She is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including Policing The Womb, which chronicles how women’s reproduction has become the political scapegoat in Congress and legislatures across the U.S., resulting in the rise of policies and practices that dramatically erode reproductive liberty. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and an American Bar Foundation Fellow.
  • David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. His 2019 book, Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (Columbia Global Reports), explores the ways in which companies, governments and activists struggle to define the rules for online expression.
  • Kyung Sin "KS" Park is a professor at Korea University's School of Law. He researches, litigates, lobbies, and speaks in the areas of freedom of speech, privacy, net neutrality, web accessibility, digital innovation, and intellectual property. Relevantly, he is the co-founder of executive director of Open Net, which published this piece on COVID-19 surveillance in Korea, a member of Global Media Freedom Initiative High-Level Panel of Experts (2019 July - present), a board member of Global Network Initiative (2017 - present) and an advisor to Freedom Online Coalition (2015 - present). He served as commissioner at the Korean Communication Standards Commission, a presidentially appointed internet content regulation body (2011 - 2014).
  • Nohyoung Park is a professor at Korea Univ. Law School. He teaches and makes research on international (economic) law, legal aspects of cybersecurity, data protection and digital trade, and negotiation/mediation. He has advised Korean governments on these areas. For example, he attended the 4th and 5th UNGGEs on information security by advising Korean delegations. He has been regularly involved in international dialogues with American, Chinese, European, Japanese and Russian experts on cybersecurity and data protection. He is responsible for the Cyber Law Centre at Korea Univ. Law School.

Flier for the event