Digital tools against COVID-19: taxonomy, ethical challenges, and navigation aid

Gasser, Urs; Ienca, Marcello; Scheibner, James; Sleigh, Joanna; Vayena, Effy

doi:10.1016/s2589-7500(20)30137-0

Cited by 276 publications

(355 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…CT apps may prove to be valuable public health tools, but they also raise significant concerns (Gasser et al 2020;Lucivero et al 2020). As part of the Covid-19 pandemic response, advisory bodies, NGOs, and expert initiatives have interrogated the ethical aspects of digital surveillance technologies, including CT apps (e.g.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Digital contact tracing and exposure notification: ethical guidance for trustworthy pandemic management

Ranisch

Nijsingh²,

Ballantyne

et al. 2020

Ethics Inf Technol

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There is growing interest in contact tracing apps (CT apps) for pandemic management. It is crucial to consider ethical requirements before, while, and after implementing such apps. In this paper, we illustrate the complexity and multiplicity of the ethical considerations by presenting an ethical framework for a responsible design and implementation of CT apps. Using this framework as a starting point, we briefly highlight the interconnection of social and political contexts, available measures of pandemic management, and a multi-layer assessment of CT apps. We will discuss some trade-offs that arise from this perspective. We then suggest that public trust is of major importance for population uptake of contact tracing apps. Hasty, ill-prepared or badly communicated implementations of CT apps will likely undermine public trust, and as such, risk impeding general effectiveness.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first ethical frameworks for digital tools in the context of Covid-19 have been proposed (Mello and Wang 2020;Gasser et al 2020;Lucivero et al 2020;Kahn et al 2020;Morley et al 2020;Parker et al 2020), and the European Commission (2020) has drafted various recommendations and guidelines for digital contact tracing in the EU.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital contact tracing and exposure notification: ethical guidance for trustworthy pandemic management

Ranisch

Nijsingh²,

Ballantyne

et al. 2020

Ethics Inf Technol

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“…Yet the use of contact-tracing or exposure notification technologies raise a host of other issues which have been far less prevalent in discussions around their deployment. These involve questions of ethics and human rights that include access to the technologies, the deployment of unproven technologies on vulnerable populations, the risks of false positives and negative notifications and the potential for differential impacts on vulnerable communities, and the raising of false expectations that might lead to more risk-taking behaviours (Millar 2020, Kahn 2020Kitchin 2020, Gasser et al 2020. The focus on privacy, and in particular, the debate over centralized and decentralized storage, also framed the discussion as one about which type of contact-tracing app to adopt, rather than one of whether contact-tracing apps were ethically appropriate or even useful technologies.…”

Section: Global Debates About Privacy/surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 Contact Tracing

Scassa

2021

International Journal of E-Planning Research

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This article surveys the rise of contact tracing technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the privacy, ethical, and human rights issues they raise. It examines the relationship of these technologies to local public health initiatives, and how the privacy debate over these apps made the technology in some cases less responsive to public health agency needs. The article suggests that as countries enter the return to normal phase, the more important and more invasive contact tracing and disease surveillance technologies will be deployed at the local level in the context of employment, transit, retail services, and other activities. The smart city may be co-opted for COVID-19 surveillance, and individuals will experience tracking and monitoring as they go to work, shop, dine, and commute. The author questions whether the attention given to national contact tracing apps has overshadowed more local contexts where privacy, ethical, and human rights issues remain deeply important but relatively unexamined. This raises issues for city local governance and urban e-planning.

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“…The copyright holder for this this version posted October 26, 2020. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.22.20216788 doi: medRxiv preprint 2 individuals. [8] This automated and digital approach thus offers governments a more costeffective and easily scalable method than traditional contact tracing. [9] Given such advantages, several countries have or are in the process of developing Covid-19 digital contact tracing mobile applications.…”

Section: Digital Contact Tracingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital contact-tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic: an analysis of newspaper coverage in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

Amann

Sleigh

Vayena

2020

Preprint

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Governments around the globe have started to develop and deploy digital contact tracing apps to gain control over the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). The appropriateness and usefulness of these technologies as a containment measure have since sparked political and academic discussions globally. The present paper contributes to this debate through an exploration of how the national daily newspapers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland reported on the development and adoption of digital contact-tracing apps during early and after stages of the lockdown. These countries were among the first in Europe to develop apps and were critical voices in the debate of decentralized vs. centralized data processing. We conducted thematic analysis on news coverage published between January and May 2020 in high-circulation national daily newspapers (print) from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. A total of 148 newspaper articles were included in the final analysis. From our analysis emerged six core themes of the development and adoption of digital contact tracing apps: 1) data governance; 2) role of IT giants; 3) scientific rigor; 4) voluntariness; 5) functional efficacy; 6) role of the app. These results shed light on the different facets of discussion regarding digital contact tracing as portrayed in German-speaking media. As news coverage can serve as a proxy for public perception, this study complements emerging survey data on public perceptions of digital contact tracing apps by identifying potential issues of public concern.

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Digital tools against COVID-19: taxonomy, ethical challenges, and navigation aid

Cited by 276 publications

References 40 publications

Digital contact tracing and exposure notification: ethical guidance for trustworthy pandemic management

Digital contact tracing and exposure notification: ethical guidance for trustworthy pandemic management

COVID-19 Contact Tracing

Digital contact-tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic: an analysis of newspaper coverage in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

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