Certain companies already had considerable capacity to track and trace individuals, and many experts believed that technology could play a crucial role in contact-tracing to help curb the spread of the illness. Professor Teresa Scassa is now being recognized for her scholarship on the nuances of this public health surveillance issue.
Professor Scassa has been named as the winner of the Business and Human Rights Journal’s Best Developments in the Field Article of 2021 for her article “Pandemic Innovation: The Private Sector and the Development of Contact-Tracing and Exposure Notification Apps.”
The article discusses how, early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, private sector companies helped develop contact-tracing and exposure notification apps. The development of such tools created a tension between technological capability and human rights. Professor Scassa explores how the need for a rapid response to the spread of COVID-19 created privacy and trust concerns. She examines how these considerations affected the choices of both the technology companies and the government. The selection committee noted that “the piece drives home the message that the use of technology will continue to be a site of political debate. It is not neutral, but rather circumstantial and dependent on context. […] The article gave the committee enough background to begin wrestling with other, thought-provoking questions, such as: to what extent did States and private sector use technological applications meant for monitoring and managing the Covid pandemic to consolidate control, maximize profit, and protect systems of oppression? What alternative systems were adopted by States (especially more authoritarian States), and how did these work out?” The committee hopes to see these questions addressed in future scholarship.
The Business and Human Rights Journal is a publication of Cambridge University Press. Click here to read more about the Prize and to see past winners.
Congratulations to Professor Scassa!