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Chris Tangonan
CST 300 Writing Lab
8 February 2024
Tracing Applications and the Preservation of Privacy

Introduction

With the economy placed on hold and quarantine mandates generating tension amongst

the people, governments and health authorities scrambled to mitigate the damage COVID-19 left

on its citizens. Aiming to prioritize managing the spread of the disease at the forefront. It’s no

wonder these authority figures looked towards updating existing solutions such as manual

contact tracing and integrating technological advancements as a means to uplift quarantine

measures and get their countries back on track. This technological solution comes to us in the

form of digital contact tracing.

In most instances, digital contact tracing is often referred to as a technology that

implements some form of a Global Positioning System, also known as GPS, which monitors the

user’s whereabouts in some centralized storage center, capable of being accessed and monitored

by authority figures. However, as this may be true in some instances, it does not encompass the

entire scope of digital contact tracing. There is also an alternative technological solution

developed with privacy in mind. Namely, proximity tracing, which is lightweight in its cost of

computation, and approaches the problem at a different angle. Instead, proximity tracing utilizes

Bluetooth technology and its ability to log devices within proximity of one another. When

logging, the user’s identification is anonymized to provide security and ensure that their personal

information is not compromised. So when a user identifies as being compromised, the system

runs through their logs, notifying each individual within close proximity.

Early adopters of digital contact tracing primarily consisted countries of centralized

authority, since they are not as concerned about adhering to privacy rights and were more
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focused on containing the spread. Countries such as China, opted for the most privacy-invasive

form, It was due to this that privacy concerns sprang up in other countries. This would eventually

lead to the Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing project, DP-3T for short. DP-3T

was formed as a means to influence the building of applications with privacy in mind, through

the use of proximity tracing via Bluetooth over GPS tracking, and also promoting

decentralization of user data, which could anonymize the user’s identification, data be stored on

their phones and data ultimately being deleted in a time-sensitive manner. They hoped that

establishing a framework for building with privacy in mind, would encourage the building of

trust between developers and users. Eventually, this led, to Google and Apple adopting the

features of DP-3T, and they created an API framework for their operating systems, integrating

both measures of proximity tracing and decentralization. Due to the influence of both companies

and their integration with their operating systems, their adoption aided in popularizing the

building with privacy in mind. This was known as the Google Apple Exposure Notification

System, also known as GAEN, which provided a solid foundation for building. Accordingly, “Of

the existing contact tracing applications, 25 percent use GPS, 48 percent use Bluetooth, and 22

percent use a combination of both.” (Alanoca et al., 2021). This shows a vast majority of

developers and nations are either adopting GAEN or using some form of proximity tracing,

which are the least privacy-intrusive options.

However, with the variation of digital contact tracing applications available, there was

still much concern over adoption rates, and how each country was to implement the technology

as there has never been a foundational means of regulation when it comes to new technology.

Even though these applications could be built with privacy in mind, it can be seen that any form

of tracing could be considered a method of surveillance: To what lengths, should it be considered

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acceptable to employ additional means of surveillance on its people, to control the spread of a

disease?

Stakeholder Analysis

With the concern over privacy and centralized access to user information, several

stakeholders are affected by the issue. The general public is of immediate concern, especially

during the pandemic, when the government issued lockdowns already and was actively

impacting their livelihood. Governments had to do their best to maintain order and balance what

would be best for their country and its citizens as a whole. We’ll also be grouping technological

companies and healthcare authorities along with the government, since in this instance, the

problem-solving process required collaboration amongst the three parties.

Stakeholder 1: Government/Technological Companies

Values: The government’s immediate concern amidst the COVID-19 pandemic was to

break the chain of transmission, thus limiting the number of casualties and mitigating future

complications as the virus evolves. They believe that the tools that can employ the greatest

amount of good amongst its citizens are viable options and are worth considering to benefit their

population as a whole.

Position: Employing several methods such as quarantining, promoting social distancing,

and the use of protective masks. Health authorities knew limiting the spread to be a

multi-variable problem that required outside thinking beyond their scope of influence and

innovation. They explored technological solutions that took previously proven methods of

disease control and looked towards increasing its range of efficacy amongst the population.

Claims: Governments employ a claim of policy, considering the conditional state of

emergency, the adoption of contact tracing via smartphones was seen as a justified means to
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prevent the spread. For one, it has been determined that manual contact tracing has already

established itself as an effective means to mitigate the spread of disease. Another is that it builds

off the previous method, automating several tasks in the process, which previously would have

required a massive workforce to complete (“Contact Tracing Apps”, 2020).

Stakeholder 2: General Public

Values: The general public’s primary concern pertains to liberty and privacy. For one,

they value autonomy and the ability to move freely unopposed by authority figures. They also

have a strong distrust of how centralized figures make use of and manage their data. Provided the

scenario where they were forced to lockdown, they’ve already compromised several liberties to

prevent the spread of COVID-19, the added measure of surveillance was considered an invasion

of their rights to privacy.

Position: The general public is concerned about the centralization of power, as the

implementation of such applications that utilize digital contact tracing not only employs a

measure of surveillance but also gives access to sensitive individual information that can easily

be abused without any indication that citizens’ information has been compromised.

Claims: There are several claims by the general public to deny contact tracing

application adoption. One is their concern for privacy as a claim of value. Digital contact tracing

applications exploit the ability to geo-locate and track the app user intermittently. Concerned

with their belief that they have a right to privacy, any surveillance measure through digital

contact tracing impedes their natural right to privacy.

Another claim is that of definition, as citizens have also seen the word privacy being

utilized as a marketing tactic with even the most privacy-preserving approaches utilizing
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Bluetooth technology–which is still considered surveillance technology–with the capability of

being privacy-invasive (Mann, Mitchell & Foth, 2022).

Argument Question

Should governments implore technological advancements made by big tech in the form

of surveillance in order to mitigate the spread of an epidemic?

Arguments

Stakeholder 1: Government/Technological Companies

Government, healthcare authorities, and technological companies justify their decisions

through a utilitarian framework. Utilitarianism, as defined by its founder, Jeremy Bentham, states

that whichever decision is made will ultimately provide “The greatest good for the greatest

number.” (Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics., 2021). The utilitarian

framework suggests the decision maker looks through a lens where everyone is affected and

makes their decision based on which decision will provide the greatest benefit to those affected

as a whole.

Governments and healthcare authorities employ this utilitarian framework on this issue.

Provided that contact tracing acts as a countermeasure to the spread of disease, and that previous

employment of manual contact tracing has aided in mitigating several other outbreaks, including

tuberculosis, measles, HIV, etc. (Alanoca et al., 2021).

Although early forms of digital contact tracing, implemented technology that could be

considered privacy-invasive, especially the implementation in China (Easterday, 2020). For this

reason the Decentralized Privacy Protecting Protocol was formed, also known as DP-3T, and set

a foundation for digital contact tracing with privacy in mind. With the use of Bluetooth
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technology, they also incorporated a system of logging and notifying in a decentralized manner,

where user’s data is kept on their phone and then later deleted after a certain allotted time period.

Making it less likely the user’s information is to be abused.

Another interesting consideration is that formulating experiments based on the

effectiveness of contact tracing would ultimately be unethical considering the harm it could

cause participants and populations. However, during the pandemic, an instance occurred where

there was an accidental loss of positive case data for the national contact tracing system of

England. Nearly 20% of all cases were erased and their recent contacts had not been notified fast

enough to self-quarantine (Fetzer & Graeber, 2021). In short, the natural experiment had shown

substantial evidence that the population which was already under a digital contact tracing system

had undergone a dark period where the system was unable to log data. Consequently, during this

period a significant spike in cases occurred that could potentially be attributed to the loss of data.

Although disease containment is a multi-variable problem, this was one of the unique studies,

that showed the potential impact digital contact tracing had in preventing the spread.

Stakeholder 2: General Public

Autonomy and freedom are synonymous values held by the philosopher Immanuel Kant,

both of which are essential to the development of the argument in support of the general public.

Kant’s primary concern is the rational of an individual and how their reasoning behind

decision-making is the reflection of their ideals. In this instance, the possible invasion of privacy

against the general public undermines the definition of Kant’s ethics, where individuals will not

ask another to do, what he or she cannot. (Allen, 2016)

The general public has several concerns about digital contact tracing, with most

stemming from a natural distrust of any form of centralized authority. Their distrust has been
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further exacerbated by certain promotional material of the applications as, they coupled the

importance of these apps with highlighting the economic state they were in due to quarantine

measures and that downloading their applications would speed up the easing of lockdowns

(Mann, 2022). With some of the population's distrust compounding throughout the pandemic, the

general public’s skepticism of such an application that employs surveillance tooling could

potentially affect adoption rates.

The most glaring concern, posed by the general public, is their right to privacy. Citizens

are already concerned with the use of technologies to surveil them. While one method of digital

contact tracing deliberately tracking and monitoring the app user, proximity tracing also comes

with a caveat. Even though the Bluetooth proximity tracing option is promoted as

privacy-preserving, it still has some privacy-invasive impacts and is still capable of tracking

users if the host has access to Bluetooth beacons. (Mann, Mitchell & Foth, 2022). This

demonstrates that even though proximity tracing is a technology developed with privacy in mind,

it still can be utilized as a means of surveillance.

Understanding that Kantian ethics is unique where most ethical frameworks focus on the

impact of others, there’s an aspect in Kant’s ethics that accounts for self-regard. In this instance,

the moral right to privacy should be taken into account, and compromising that right goes against

the general public’s self-interest. By doing so, the general public would instead be compromising

one of their own personal freedoms to accommodate the government's utilitarian framework.

Student Position

Considering the state of emergency that we were in, and that preventing the spread of

COVID-19 was a multi-faceted ordeal. I believe each government's ability to explore

technological solutions to mitigate the spread of disease prevented the least amount of harm to
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their populations. I side with the government stakeholders mostly and apply the consequentialism

framework. Since it was such a complex problem to manage and believe authority figures

provided as much transparency as possible. In most countries, they took careful consideration of

their approaches as public trust is a vital factor in a country's measure of strength. Therefore, the

impact generated by the technological companies, health authorities, and governments provided

the most good, as most took the extra precaution to ensure that the building and implementation

of digital contact tracing had been done with privacy in mind. Accordingly, a study was done

amidst the pandemic asking participants whether or not they’d be willing to submit their personal

information to digital contact tracing applications, and three-quarters had no issue in doing so.

(Lewis, 2020).

However, it is important to distinguish I cannot completely side with governments, and

that under the process in which data is collected, especially in the U.S., since there is no federal

law that provides privacy protections, mostly because the implementation of technology is

voluntary and that those collecting the user’s information is a non-state entity not covered under

HIPAA’s requirements (Holmes et al., 2020). This is one of the primary factors why I believe that

there is room for improvement in the collaboration of entities like our government and

technological companies in the future. I believe under each conditional circumstance, there needs

to be a regulatory framework created first and foremost to protect its citizens from plausible

human rights violations. It is due to this factor, that applying a utilitarianism framework is not as

simple a task as there are numerous consequences derived by governments decisions.

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References

Alanoca, S., Guetta-Jeanrenaud, N., Ferrari, I., Weinberg, N., R Buse, Ç., & Miailhe, N. (2021).

Digital contact tracing against COVID-19: A governance framework to build trust.

International Data Privacy Law, 11(1), 3-17. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipab001

Allen, Anita (December, 2016) Protecting One’s Own Privacy in a Big Data Economy. Harvard

Law Review. 2016 Referenced from:

https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-130/protecting-ones-own-privacy-in-a-big-data-e

conomy/

Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics. (August, 2014) Referenced from:

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/calculating-consequ

ences-the-utilitarian-approach/

Contact tracing apps. (2020). GAO - Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics. Retrieved

from:

https://na03.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/action/uresolver.do?operation=resolveService

&package_service_id=78161825550002901&institutionId=2901&customerId=2900

Easterday, J. (2020). Technology in Conflict: How COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps can

Exacerbate Violent Conflicts. LSE IDEAS. Retrieved from:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep45312

Fetzer, T., & Graeber, T. (2021). Measuring the scientific effectiveness of contact tracing:

Evidence from a natural experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -

PNAS, 118(33), 1-. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100814118

Holmes, E. N., & Linebaugh, C. D. (2020). COVID-19 : digital contact tracing and privacy laws

/ Eric N. Holmes, Chris D. Linebaugh. ([Library of Congress public edition].).

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Congressional Research Service. Retrieved from:

https://csu-mb.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_UMB/1b7t6st/alma9910724

61811802901

Lewis, D. (2020). Why many countries failed at COVID contact-tracing -- but some got it right.

Nature, 588(7838), 384+. Referenced from:

https://link-gale-com.csumb.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A649611539/AONE?u=csumb_main

&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=58b899a8

Mann, M., Mitchell, P., & Foth, M. (2022). Between surveillance and technological solutionism:

A critique of privacy-preserving apps for COVID-19 contact-tracing. New Media &

Society, 0(0). https://doi-org.csumb.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/14614448221109800