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for manual contact tracing even with lower uptake. Where a separate
function of a contact-tracing app is to collect self-reported symptom
data for AI, a much smaller percentage of users may still make the
data collected useful for research purposes, even if that small percent-
age renders the contact-tracing functions ineffective.
Most governments that have adopted contact-tracing apps have
made them voluntary, in spite of the need for significant uptake to be
effective. Requiring all citizens to download and use an app that col-
lects information about their movements or proximity to other indi-
viduals raises serious civil liberties concerns. It is also not practicable
or equitable in a context in which not every member of the population
has a cellphone. While data from Statistics Canada suggest that a high
number of Canadians have smartphones, the number of smartphones
is significantly lower for seniors, with only 60.4% of those over the
age of 65 reporting having a smartphone.20 Beyond this, the limita-
tions of relying on cellphone-collected data to guide policy have been
revealed in early experiments that used such data to guide local polic-
ing and other municipal services, for example.21
Privacy
It is evident that the architecture of contact-tracing apps has been
influenced by privacy concerns. Initial use of GPS data raised the
potential for surveillance. Bluetooth-based solutions aim to solve
the surveillance problem by not capturing or sharing location data.
Instead, when two phones using the Bluetooth-enabled app are in
proximity, the devices exchange digital “tokens” that are stored only
on users’ phones. These tokens record data about the device encoun-
tered, as well as the degree of proximity and the duration of the
encounter. A concern with Bluetooth models is that even de-identi-
fied contact data could be used to create a “social graph” mapping an
20. “Smartphone Use and Smartphone Habits by Gender and Age Group” (last mod-
ified 27 May 2020), online: Statistics Canada <doi.org/10.25318/2210011501-eng>.
21. See for example Kate Crawford, “The Hidden Biases in Big Data” (1 April 2013),
online: Harvard Business Review <hbr.org/2013/04/the-hidden-biases-in-big-
data>; Stephen Goldsmith & Susan Crawford, “The Responsive City: Engaging
Communities through Data-smart Governance” (2014) 39:3 J Urban Affairs 458;
Alred Tat-Kei Ho et al, “Big Data and Local Performance Management: The
Experience of Kansas City, Missouri” In Yu-Che Chen & Michael Ahn, eds,
Routledge Handbook on Information Technology in Government (Routledge, 2017)
95.
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Titel
- VULNERABLE
- Untertitel
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Autoren
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Verlag
- Ottawa Press
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Abmessungen
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Seiten
- 648
- Kategorien
- Coronavirus
- International