ABSTRACT
As evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing reliance on smartphone apps such as digital contact tracing apps and vaccination passports to respond to and mitigate public health threats. In light of the European Commission's guidance, Member States typically offer such apps on a voluntary, ‘opt-in' basis. In this paper, we question the extent to which the individual choice to use these apps–and similar future technologies–is indeed a voluntary one. By explicating ethical and legal considerations governing the choice situations surrounding the use of smartphone apps, specifically those related to the negative consequences that declining the use of these apps may have (e.g. loss of opportunities, social exclusion, stigma), we argue that the projected downsides of refusal may in effect limit the liberty to decline for certain subpopulations. To mitigate these concerns, we recommend three categories of approaches that may be employed by governments to safeguard voluntariness. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, European Union (EU) Member States adopted technological solutions aimed at mitigating the effects of the virus, as well as enforcing newly adopted public health measures. Examples include apps for disseminating information, performing self-diagnosis, enforcing home quarantine orders and aiding contact tracing. This extensive use of technology for tracking and promoting public health raises important questions regarding EU citizens' privacy. Thus far, the discourse in this regard has predominantly revolved around data protection, the risk of surveillance and the right to control access over one's personal information (informational privacy). In light of the push towards a more unified approach to mitigating the current pandemic and future health crises through a European Health Union (EHU), we consider a different dimension of privacy that may be at risk when employing technology for public health, namely the right to non-interference with one's decisions (decisional privacy). In particular, this article focuses on whether the advances in health-related persuasive technology, together with a more general movement towards nudging as an individual and public health tool, will require EU legislation to further protect decisional privacy by regulating hypernudging technologies and to guide the EHU in coordinating public health measures that utilise these technologies in a privacy-preserving way. © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.