Page - 265 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

CHAPTER C-2 Privacy, Ethics, and Contact-Tracing Apps Teresa Scassa,* Jason Millar,** and Kelly Bronson*** Abstract Data and analytics are being enlisted to play a role in understand- ing and preventing the spread of COVID-19. This chapter focuses on digital “apps,” which are being deployed by governments around the world to supplement the manual contact-tracing efforts typically performed by public health officials. Contact-tracing apps have been developed rapidly, with little time for user testing, and their adoption raises important privacy and ethical concerns. In this chapter, we out- line some of these potential concerns. We begin by tracing the history of contact tracing as a pre-digital, or manual, method and then detail the current contact-tracing efforts, distinguishing among different types of apps and data use approaches. We then draw from our com- plementary expertise in law, ethics, and sociology to outline potential risks of contact-tracing apps along these dimensions. Risks include * Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy and Professor, Faculty of Law (Common Law Section), University of Ottawa. ** Canada Research Chair in The Ethical Engineering of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa. *** Canada Research Chair in Science and Society and Assistant Professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Scotiabank AI & Society Initiative and the SSHRC Canada Research Chairs program.