Will Covid-19 spell the end of Europe’s long-cherished privacy ideals and give way to widespread technology-fueled state surveillance?

Countries across the region have been ramping up data-tracking technology to follow the trail of coronavirus infection and monitor quarantines.

This has involved mobile phone operators handing over location data while at the same time the UK’s National Health Services enlisted the help of US technology company Palantir, better known for its relationship with government spy agencies.

But the fightback is beginning, with a coalition of technology experts and scientists from around Europe banding together to try and prevent the fight against coronavirus coming at the expense of privacy.

This week, the group unveiled an initiative with the (not very catchy) name PEPP-PT, short for Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing, this week. Its slogan: “Proximity tracing YES, giving up privacy NO!”

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The initiative is meant to be “a fully privacy-preserving approach” to tracking coronavirus infection chains across borders in Europe, and is led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) for telecoms. It is backed by 130 members across eight countries, from research labs like France’s Inria to companies like the UK’s Vodafone.

The PEPP-PT’s aim is to develop a basic set of “standards, technology and services” that countries and developers can then plug into. It’s a kind of framework for the multitude of apps that are likely to emerge as local answers to a global pandemic.

The Europe-wide initiative came just days after the UK health service’s digital transformation unit NHSX announced it was organising a global hackathon to find privacy-friendly technology solutions to fight Covid-19.