Beyond privacy vs. health: a justification analysis of the contact-tracing apps debate in the Netherlands
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Beyond privacy vs. health: a justification analysis of the contact‑tracing apps debate in the Netherlands Lotje Elizabeth Siffels1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In the Netherlands, as in many other nations, the government has proposed the use of a contact-tracing app as a means of helping to contain the spread of the corona virus. The discussion about the use of such an app has mostly been framed in terms of a tradeoff between privacy and public health. This research statement presents an analysis of the Dutch public debate on Corona-apps by using the framework of Orders of Worth by Boltanski and Thévenot (1991). It argues that this framework can help us to move beyond the dichotomy of privacy vs. public health by recognizing a plurality of conceptions of the common good in the debate about contact-tracing apps. This statement presents six orders of worth present in the Dutch debate: civic, domestic, vitality, market, industrial and project, and argues that the identification of which common goods are at stake will contribute to discussions about the use of this technology from a standpoint with a richer ethical perspective. Keywords Corona-app · Digital health · Justification framework · COVID-19 · Moral repertoires · Common good · Public values
Roadmapping beyond privacy: two approaches for mapping ethical considerations involving contact tracing apps As many countries across the globe are struggling with Covid-19, a discussion is taking place about the possible use of (a wide variety of) contact tracing apps. The goal is to gain insight in the spread of Covid-19 which, in many cases, requires location data and biometric information. Most concerns about these apps in the discussion focus on privacy as an individual right to control over one’s information.1 However, we believe that this discussion should be broadened to include other ethical considerations and a richer understanding of privacy as a public value. We present two research statements that contribute to the discussion by offering considerations ‘beyond privacy’ when evaluating the development and implementation of contact tracing apps. The first, ‘Contact tracing apps: an ethical
roadmap’, presents a roadmap for the ethical evaluation of contact-tracing apps. It raises three ethical concerns—privacy, Big Tech dependency and coercion—by exploring three scenarios (Lanzing 2020, this issue). The second, ‘Beyond Privacy vs. Health: a justification analysis of the contact-tracing apps debate in the Netherlands’, shows how a justification analysis of the debate about contact tracing apps, using the framework developed by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot, can enable us to recognize a plurality of common goods at stake (Siffels 2020, this issue). Both statements are part of the ‘Digital Good’ project, an interdisciplinary research project that focuses on the disruption of health as we move into the digital era. The project investigates ways of approaching the digitalization of health from a standpoint of the common good, rather than one
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