At @oxfordethicslab we (me, @JoshCowls @RosariaTaddeo @Floridi) have been thinking about how you can compare, 4rm an ethical perspective, the (43++) #COVID19 digital tracking and tracing solutions that have been launched worldwide and have developed a framework 4 the purpose 1/

First ethics and the law are NOT the same thing. To massively oversimplify: the law tells you what CAN be done and ethics tells you what SHOULD be done. The law is also black & white. A digital solution is either legal or it's not. 2/

In comparison with ethics you can be ethical/ unethical but also more or less ethical/unethical even within either of those categories. This is primarily because we perceive ethics as being discursive & contextually dependent. 3/

Contextual dependency is particularly important when the pandemic is dynamic in its nature both in space and time. Something that is ethically justifiable somewhere may not be somewhere else & something that was ethically justifiable in 1 place yday may not be 2morrow 4/

Because these complexities exist we don't think that the basic principles of necessity, proportionality, scientific soundness & time-boundedness are sufficient to protect fundamental rights and freedoms. There are other enabling factors that also need to be considered 5/

To be specific there are 12 enabling factors in addition to the 4 high-level principles. Taken together these represent the validation of the system and the verification (see @floridi blog 4 more) or: 'is it the right solution' and 'can it be designed in the right way' 6/

These are complex questions that need careful consideration because we are not facing a win-win situation where, if a DTT system works it is to be lauded, and if it does not, then no harm. The severity of the crisis does not justify using any possible means to overcome it 7/

Read our full pre-print 4 more details & to see the framework in full on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3582550 ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340844628_Ethical_Guidelines_for_SARS-CoV-2_Digital_Tracking_and_Tracing_Systems or http://Academia.edu  https://www.academia.edu/42820350/Ethical_Guidelines_for_SARS-CoV-2_Digital_Tracking_and_Tracing_Systems / ends