Human Rights Measure

The stated purpose of the COVID-19 Contact Tracing Privacy Act of Kansas is: “to protect the privacy of persons whose information is collected through contact tracing and the confidentiality of contact data.” The legislation includes provisions on elements including: limited use of data (“Contact data shall be . . . Used only for the purpose of contact tracing and not for any other purpose”), confidentiality (“Contact data shall be . . . confidential and shall not be disclosed, produced in response to any Kansas open records act request or made public, unless the disclosure is necessary to conduct contact tracing”), data destruction (“Contact data shall be . . . safely and securely destroyed when no longer necessary for contact tracing, pursuant to rules and regulations . . . ”), voluntariness (“Participation in contact tracing shall be voluntary, and no contact or infected person shall be compelled to participate in, nor be prohibited from participating in, contact tracing”), methods used (“Contact tracing shall not be conducted through the use of any service or means that uses cellphone location data to identify or track, directly or indirectly, the movement of persons”), and consent (“Contact data voluntarily collected or maintained by a third party may be obtained by a contact tracer only if: The third party provides such information to the contact tracer voluntarily and with the consent of the infected person or contact whose information is disclosed; or such information is provided pursuant to a valid warrant.”). While this section of the legislation was scheduled to expire on May 1, 2021, SB 304, “[r]emoving the sunset provision in the COVID-19 contact tracing privacy act” was introduced in the Kansas Senate on March 23, 2021 and in the House on April 6, 2021, on which date is was referred to the Committee on Judiciary, where it is currently “in Committee.”