Back in the year 2019, when the world was struck by a deadly pandemic, there arose a need of tracing people. To trace people individually, a strategy was devised and it was proposed that mobile phones, with a GPS sensor, be used to trace people efficiently. “Scientific and epidemiological evidence suggests that an app of this kind has the potential
to contribute to reducing the suffering caused by the pandemic and minimize the harms caused by long periods of lockdown.” (Parker et al., 2020) However, as per the research conducted, there were several ethical questions related to the adopted solution of tracing people. The research also mentions that without tracing, only unintelligent lockdown can be implemented, which applies to the masses of which many may not be infected. Also, tracing people is a violation of their privacy and the research aims to find whether this violation is justified in such times. The research explores the effect of the compulsoriness of using the application and how people would react in case the use of such an application was enforced. The research further explains the responsibilities of individuals and professionals from an ethical standpoint.
The authors also mention the need of using contact tracing applications by saying “The contact tracing apps are likely to play a vital role in aiding health authorities quickly identify an individual that may have been exposed to the virus.” (Ahmed et al., 2020) The steps taken to trace people during the pandemic were harsh in some cases but also necessary. The spread of the virus from one person’s lack of attention could pose a risk to the lives of thousands of people. I believe that privacy is an important concern and the idea of compromising some privacy for the betterment of the masses seems fair to me. However, the scope of privacy invasion that is justified and the duration of the compromise should be at the discretion of individuals as it is their data that is being referred to. Apart from that, during a pandemic, the primary goal of the majority would be survival and well-being. I believe that sharing one’s location to help other people be safe is in the interest of the majority of the population. The working of the application and its architecture is well defined. But there are some aspects that the research does not take into consideration. Every company has a certain set of regulations enforced which only allows the data of a user to be stored for a fixed duration of time. This duration affects the level of privacy as data is deleted after this period and hence future research should be based on this.