Avec ses collègues Tereza Hendl, et Verina Wild, Ryoa Chung copublie une article intitulé « Pandemic Surveillance and Racialized Subpopulatiohns: Mitigatihng Vulnerabilities in COVID-19 Apps« , paraissant dans le volume accessible en ligne du Journal of Bioethical Inquiry incluant les actes du symposium sur la COVID-19.

Résumé

Debates about effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have emphasized the paramount importance of digital tracing technology in suppressing the disease. So far, discussions about the ethics of this technology have focused on privacy concerns, efficacy, and uptake. However, important issues regarding power imbalances and vulnerability also warrant attention. As demonstrated in other forms of digital surveillance, vulnerable subpopulations pay a higher price for surveillance measures. There is reason to worry that some types of COVID-19 technology might lead to the employment of disproportionate profiling, policing, and criminalization of marginalized groups. It is, thus, of crucial importance to interrogate vulnerability in COVID-19 apps and ensure that the development, implementation, and data use of this surveillance technology avoids exacerbating vulnerability and the risk of harm to surveilled subpopulations, while maintaining the benefits of data collection across the whole population. This paper outlines the major challenges and a set of values that should be taken into account when implementing disease surveillance technology in the pandemic response.

Extraits

 » (…) It is of immense importance to collect and evaluate exact demographic data in marginalized subpopulations in the infectious disease context. Precisely because the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t affecting the population in the same way, epidemiological data on COVID-19 infection and mortality are needed to capture the scale and forms of the inequalities entrenched and magnified by the pandemic (Bhala et al. 2020; Chowkwanyun and Reed 2020).
(…)
However, important issues regarding power imbalances and vulnerability in relation to COVID-19 apps, which can complement the collection of demographic epidemiological data, warrant closer attention. As we will show here, a comprehensive debate about vulnerability in COVID-19 apps is necessary to prevent a pandemic-response, which would further exacerbate the vulnerability of the structurally marginalized subpopulations. »