Page 205 - https://downmagaz.net

enterprise that handles SK Telecom’s services.

Trigger words lead to a recommendation for a

visit by public health officials.

As South Korea’s government pushes to

allow businesses to access vast amounts of

personal information and to ease restrictions

holding back telemedicine, tech firms

could potentially find much bigger markets

for their artificial intelligence and other

emerging technologies.

The drive, resisted for years by civil liberty

advocates and medical professionals, has

been reinvigorated by a technology-driven

fight against COVID-19. It has so far allowed

South Korea to emerge as something of a

coronavirus success story but also raised

broader worries that privacy is being sacrificed

for epidemiological gains.

Armed with an infectious disease law that

was strengthened after a 2015 outbreak of a

different coronavirus, MERS, health authorities

have aggressively used credit-card records,

surveillance videos and cellphone data to find

and isolate potential virus carriers.

Locations where patients went before they

were diagnosed are published on websites and

released through cellphone alerts. Smartphone

tracking apps are used to monitor around

30,000 individuals quarantined at home.

Starting this week, entertainment venues in

Seoul, Incheon and Daejeon will be required to

register customers with smartphone QR codes

so they can be easily located if needed. The

requirement expands nationwide on June 10.

But there’s a dark side.

205