In a joint letter, nearly 300 academics from around the world expressed their support for the deployment of a privacy-friendly contact tracing app. The letter details a number of key principles to be followed by governments and companies in the deployment of contact tracing apps. 

First, contact tracing apps must only be used for supporting public health measures for the containment of COVID-19. The system must not be capable of collecting, processing, or transmitting any more data than what is necessary to achieve this purpose. All considered solutions must be fully transparent. The protocols and their implementations, including any subcomponents provided by companies, must be available for public analysis. When multiple options for implementing a certain app component or functionality exist, then the most privacy-preserving option must be chosen. The use of contact tracing apps and the systems that support them must be voluntary. According to TechCrunch, the letter follows a recent announcement by some of the same academics pulling back their support for a contact tracing project known as the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), due to privacy concerns.