COVID-19 RELATED TIMELINE

(May 28, 2020) Advisor resigns from ID2020 objecting to blockchain immunity passports for COVID-19
Elizabeth M. Renieris, a Harvard lawyer on the ID2020 technical advisory committee, has resigned from the ID2020 Alliance.
Renieris’ resignation was driven by concerns that the organization will get involved in COVID-19 immunity passports, as Coindesk first reported.
The ID2020 Alliance was founded by Accenture, Microsoft, Gavi, Rockefeller Foundation and IDEO. Partners include Mastercard, which joined last week, as well as NGOs and UN agencies.
Renieris believes immunity passports could potentially infringe privacy rights for tests that are unproven and that the identity and blockchain standards are still a work in progress.
[link to ledgerinsights.com (secure)]

(May 28, 2020) Consumer anticipation of biometric payments surges as contactless takes over from cash
Cash is disappearing and payment cards are being used more, shifting consumer attitudes about biometrics for payments
and presenting a major opportunity for fingerprint cards, a new survey report and a pair of company posts suggest.
More than half of Canadians expect that biometrics will be part of the way they purchase things within the next decade,
according to a new survey. As a Research Co. shows credit card purchases doubled during COVID-19 lockdowns to 50 percent of all transactions,
up from 24 percent in February 2019. Another 31 percent of payments were processed with debit cards,
and 4 percent through e-transfers or with a smartphone, compared to only 3 percent with cash.
[link to www.biometricupdate.com (secure)]

(June 1, 2020) ID2020 Advisor Questions Corporate Interests in Resignation Letter
Elizabeth Renieris has resigned from the ID2020 Alliance, and penned a scathing critique of the organization on her way out the door.
She specifically argues that the Alliance’s original objectives have been compromised by corporate interests,
and that the organization is now so fixated on digital identities that it is willing to sacrifice civil liberties to accomplish its aims.
ID2020 Advisor Questions Corporate Interests in Scathing Resignation Letter “At this stage, I can no longer even describe what ID2020’s mission is with any confidence,”
wrote Renieris in her resignation letter. “All I can perceive is a desire to promote decentralized identity solutions at all costs.”
[link to mobileidworld.com (secure)]

(June 3, 2020) Trump Administration Selects Five Coronavirus Vaccine Candidates as Finalists: NYT
The Trump administration has selected five companies,
including Moderna Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and Pfizer Inc,
as the most likely candidates to produce a vaccine for the novel coronavirus,
the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing senior officials.
The other companies are Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co Inc,
according to the paper.
[link to www.nytimes.com (secure)]

(June 3, 2020) Portable digital identity solution with face biometrics successfully exits FCA regulatory sandbox
A reusable digital identity solution leveraging face biometrics and developed by Onfido, Deloitte, and Evernym
has successfully exited a regulatory sandbox pilot with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA),
which the company’s say shows that portable digital ID is now market-ready.
“Now that we’ve proven the model in one of the toughest regulated markets in the world,
we’re rapidly proceeding to apply it to other geographies and services
as well such as renting a car, self-checking into a hotel and one day, even voting.”
“When you put the individual in charge of her digital identity,
everyone wins. It gives consumers the freedom to securely move about the digital world,
and businesses the ability to finally know and trust who they are interacting with.”
[link to www.biometricupdate.com (secure)]

(June 5, 2020) UK’s COVID-19 health data contracts with Google and Palantir finally emerge
Contracts for a number of coronavirus data deals that the U.K. government
inked in haste with U.S. tech giants, including Google and Palantir,
plus a U.K.-based AI firm called Faculty, have been published today
by openDemocracy and law firm Foxglove — which had threatened legal action for withholding the information.
Concerns had been raised about what is an unprecedented transfer of health data on millions of U.K. citizens to private tech companies,
including those with a commercial interest in acquiring data to train and build AI models.
Freedom of Information requests for the contracts had been deferred up to now.
In a blog post today, openDemocracy and Foxglove write that the data store contracts show
tech companies were “originally granted intellectual property rights (including the creation of databases),
and were allowed to train their models and profit off their unprecedented access to NHS data.”
[link to techcrunch.com (secure)]

(June 5, 2020) Peter Thiel’s Palantir Is Given Access to U.K. Health Data on Covid-19 Patients
Britain’s National Health Service allowed secretive U.S. technology company Palantir Technologies Inc.
access to sensitive personal data of patients, employees and members of the public
under a deal to help it cope with the Covid-19 outbreak.
Faculty, a London-based artificial intelligence firm, is also working on the NHS’s coronavirus response
and secured access to sensitive data. Tech giants Microsoft Corp., Amazon Web Services and Google
are also involved in the deal with the NHS. The companies are tasked with building a data platform
to help understand how Covid-19 is spreading across the country and the capacity of its health-care system to deal with it.
Faculty is run by Marc Warner, whose brother Ben Warner, a data scientist, worked with the Vote Leave Brexit campaign
and has attended meetings of a scientific advisory group to guide the government on its coronavirus response strategy,
the Guardian newspaper has reported.
[link to www.bloombergquint.com (secure)]

(June 8, 2020) UK government releases details of COVID-19 data-sharing deals with big tech firms after legal action threat
Contracts released by the UK government have revealed that personal health information about millions of NHS patients
was provided to private tech firms involved in the COVID-19 datastore project.
Political website openDemocracy and tech justice firm Foxglove sent legal letters demanding transparency about the agreements,
which were revealed hours before court proceedings were due to start on 5 June.
Details of the deals with Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir and Faculty
have been published online by openDemocracy.
They reveal that companies involved in the datastore project were originally granted intellectual property rights
and allowed to train their models and profit from access to NHS data, but the terms of the deal were changed after a Freedom of Information request made by Foxglove.
[link to www.healthcareitnews.com (secure)]

Great info! Thanks for posting!

missed to post whole april/2020,
than gave up cause bann filters are suppressing information on this website.

Hmmmmm!

It would be indeed interesting to know how many terms are banned here.

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