DOI
10.25779/zzja-hv81
Abstract
Debate about the adoption of digital contact tracing (DCT) apps to control the spread of COVID-19 has focussed on risks to individual privacy. This emphasis reveals significant challenges to ethical deployment of DCT, but generates constraints which undermine justification to implement DCT. It would be a mistake to view this result solely as the successful operation of ethical foresight analysis, preventing deployment of potentially harmful technology. Privacy-centric analysis treats data as private property, frames the relationship between individuals and governments as adversarial, entrenches technology platforms as gatekeepers, and supports a conception of emergency public health authority as limited by individual consent and considerable corporate influence that is in some tension with the more communitarian values that typically inform public health ethics. To overcome the barriers to ethical and effective DCT, and develop infrastructure and policy that supports the realization of potential public benefits of digital technology, a public resource conception of aggregate data should be developed.
ORCiD
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5119-8155
Recommended Citation
Buzzell, A. (2022). Public goods from private data: An effectiveness and justification dilemma for digital contact tracing. Journal of Sociotechnical Critique, 2(1), 1-21. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.25779/zzja-hv81
Included in
Applied Ethics Commons, Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons, Epidemiology Commons, Health Information Technology Commons, Other Public Health Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons