 Third, societies impose major privacy and private choice-related legal obligations on their members (Waldman 2018; Allen 2016; Westin 1967). Legal obligations of privacy and confidentiality bind persons and also bind health care providers, insurers, health-data processors, health researchers, public health officials and government (Mello at al. 2016; DHHS 2015; GAO 2001). Thus in a number of legal systems, disclosing a private medical fact or breaching medical confidentiality can result in civil liability (Allen and Rotenberg 2016; Solove 2004, 2008). The law imposes obligations to respect informational privacy (e.g., confidentiality, anonymity, secrecy and data security); physical privacy (e.g., modesty and bodily integrity); associational privacy (e.g., intimate sharing of death, illness and recovery); proprietary privacy (e.g., self ownership and control over personal identifiers, genetic data, and biospecimens); and decisional privacy (e.g., autonomy and choice in medical decision-making) (Allen 2016). Yet privacy is not everything in the eyes of the law, nor is it a sufficient or absolute ethical good (Allen 2003). In the context of emergencies and public health crises, such as the COVID-19 global pandemic, symptom checking, disclosures, surveillance and contact tracing that diminish privacy may be encouraged and legally permitted or mandated. The desire of health officials and researchers for health data concerning chronic health problems, such as diabetes, hepatitis and drug addiction, has prompted them to seek or legally obtain otherwise confidential health records.