Abstract

Our present time is characterized by three crises: the health crisis that caused an economic crisis and degenerated into a social crisis. While biomedical technologies are not able to provide safe and efficient treatment or a vaccine, digital technologies stepped in proposing a fine-tuned mobile contact tracing to mitigate the pandemic effects. It was first used in Asia, and then expanded, following different models in the different countries, with regard both to technological systems and value systems. The first experiences tended to set up an effective system for the pursued objectives, seeking to adjust to the ethical concerns of the community; the recent European initiative starts by identifying the ethical requirements to be protected, and to which the digital system of contact tracing must respond. The European Recommendation for a Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing, requires full compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Union, and the technological option is shaped to acknowledge an opting-in system, the sole use of anonymized and aggregated data, and foreseeing expiration measures and deletion of person’s data. Still, the Recommendation also acknowledges the eventual and temporary need to restrain the fundamental rights in the light of public interest, even beyond the crisis, pending adequate justification, thus establishing a quite permissive framework for possible action. De-confinement, or ‘way out’, is not for free: circulation will be as broad and free as extensive and precise the tracking of people in their interactions might be. The 'way out', will always imply a loss of rights, not always consented, for a time that can drag on. Meanwhile, the history of humanity shows that the social experiences have no return, therefore, it may always lead to a new form of 'lock up'.