Professors Sukanya Pillay and Kristen Thomasen comment on use of COVID-19 database

According to a CBC Windsor article, the Windsor Police Service's decision to access the provincial COVID-19 database has experts concerned the information could be used to unfairly target marginalized and racialized communities, causing mistrust with locals and raising serious concerns around personal privacy.

Windsor Law professors Sukanya Pillay and Kristen Thomasen provided their comments, voicing privacy and other concerns. "In a sense you have people who are already overpoliced now being policed once more," says Professor Pillay. 

In the context of race-based COVID-19 data, Professor Thomasen adds: "I worry that we start to see the ways in which it's really problematic and can have a disproportionate effect on some people compared to some other communities or individuals, which just factors into the bigger picture around the ways in which community trust is built, or affected, or negatively affected, possibly undermined by the use of different privacy-invasive technologies or conduct."

Read the full article on CBC Windsor's website.