{"id":7449,"date":"2020-05-14T18:46:32","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T18:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7449"},"modified":"2020-05-14T18:46:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T18:46:32","slug":"covid-19-contact-tracing-reveals-ethical-tradeoffs-between-public-health-and-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7449","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 contact tracing reveals ethical tradeoffs between public health and privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.folio.ca\/covid-19-contact-tracing-reveals-ethical-tradeoffs-between-public-health-and-privacy\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1920_200513-surveillance-ethics-banner.jpg\" alt=\"\"><\/a>Michael Brown has written a nice article in the U of Alberta folio on <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.folio.ca\/covid-19-contact-tracing-reveals-ethical-tradeoffs-between-public-health-and-privacy\/\">COVID-19 contact tracing reveals ethical tradeoffs between public health and privacy<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/em>The article quotes me extensively on the subject of the ethics of these new bluetooth contact tracing tools. In the interview I tried the emphasize the importance of&nbsp;<em>knowledge<\/em> and&nbsp;<em>consent.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Users of these apps should know that they are being traced through them, and<\/li>\n<li>Users should consent to their use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are a variety of these apps from the system pioneered by Singapore called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tracetogether.gov.sg\/\">TraceTogether<\/a> to its Alberta cousin <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alberta.ca\/ab-trace-together.aspx\">ABTraceTogether<\/a>. There are also a variety of approaches to tracing people from using credit card records to apps like TraceTogether. The EFF has a good essay on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2020\/03\/protecting-civil-liberties-during-public-health-crisis\">Protecting Civil Rights During a Public Health Crisis<\/a> that I adapt here to provide guidelines for when one might gather data without knowledge or consent:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\">Medically necessary: There should be a clear and compelling explanation as to how this will save lives.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Personal information proportionate to need: The information gathered should fit the need and go no further.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Information handled by health informatics specialists: The gathering and processing should be handled by health informatics units, not signals intelligence or security services.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Deleted: It should be deleted once it is no longer needed.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Not be organized due to vulnerable demographics: The information should not be binned according to stereotypical or vulnerable demographics unless there is a compelling need. We should be very careful that we don&#8217;t use the data to further disadvantage groups.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Use reviewed afterwards: The should be a review after the crisis is over.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Transparency: Government should transparent about what they are gathering and why.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\">Due process: There should be open processes for people to challenge the gathering of their information or to challenge decisions taken as a result of such information.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Brown has written a nice article in the U of Alberta folio on COVID-19 contact tracing reveals ethical tradeoffs between public health and privacy.&nbsp;The article quotes me extensively on the subject of the ethics of these new bluetooth contact tracing tools. In the interview I tried the emphasize the importance of&nbsp;knowledge and&nbsp;consent. Users of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7449\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">COVID-19 contact tracing reveals ethical tradeoffs between public health and privacy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,54,58,50,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-big-data","category-ethics-of-data-science","category-locative","category-media-and-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7452,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7449\/revisions\/7452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}