China may have abandoned its much talked about and at times, controversial zero-Covid policy months ago but the authorities are confronted with a new issue. During the strict implementation of zero-Covid policy, Chinese citizens had to scan QR codes whenever they had to use public places, public facilities, hospitals and more. Provincial governments in China are now sitting on ‘mountains’ of information collected in last three years with no uniform national plan as to what is to be done of this information.
The government in the Guangdong province has become first government to say that personal information of citizens will be deleted from government database, as reported by South China Morning Post (SCMP).
“We will thoroughly delete and destroy all data related to the services … to effectively safeguard the security of personal information,” read the statement from the government released on the health code app.
SCMP reported that the process of deletion of date has been completed in the region.
However, there is no uniformity in approach in this regard across the country. Other cities and regions have reportedly expressed differing opinions about the data. Regions such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guizhou have gone for integration of this data with other government platforms in effect, retaining the data with the government.
Use of the health code system by the local authorities had already been a topic of criticism.
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