COVID-19: Should There Really Be an App for That?

Hmmm, this post is going
to make me some enemies, but so be it.

I read this week that
the Canadian smartphone app, meant to warn users if they have been in close
contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19, is now in beta testing by
the federal Canadian Digital Service agency.

The testing is designed
to look for bugs and other problems. “We’re testing the app, not you”, the
agency’s notice reportedly advises. The distinction is lost on me.

I am more than a little
uncomfortable with this development. It is the tip of a very large ethical
iceberg that its developers would rather not talk about. There are undoubtedly
those who will say it is a great use of technology. I am inclined to substitute
abuse for use.

As I understand it, the “COVID
Alert” app will track phones’ locations relative to each other using digital
identifications unique to each phone. Users would receive an alert on their
phone if they have recently been near a person who volunteers that they have
tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Note: The agency says
the app will send false alerts just to make sure the system work. Does anyone
see the flaw in that plan?

The fact that the
success of the app depends on people volunteering to be flagged as having
tested positive may well be its undoing. I find it hard to imagine that many
people will do so.

Setting aside that
factor for the moment, the bigger issue here is the intersection and collision
of individual civil rights with the proverbial greater good. I fear we are about to open a door that can never
again be closed.

The precedent we are
setting here is a dangerous one. A legal exception is being made to our fundamental
right to privacy. You may argue that extraordinary circumstances apply that
make it worthwhile. But that is just the old the end justifies the means rationale.

You may also argue that
this is all done on a strictly voluntary basis so we should not be worried.
However, once that door is edged open even an inch, there will be a crowd of
tech companies lining up behind it to pry it further open every day.

Once you bend a civil
right, you can never straighten it out again. But it does become much easier –
for the private or the public sector – to justify bending it a bit further the
next time a perceived threat comes along. Eventually the civil right becomes a
phantom that exists in principle but not in practice.

I have been mixing my metaphors in this post. But here is the important one. The COVID-19 alert app is potentially the Pandora’s Box of our times from a civil rights perspective. If you know the myth, you know that once the contents of the box are released, the results are irreversible.

~ Now
Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting
Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which
was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

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