At this very moment, every country including Slovenia faces a challenge of COVID 19 tracking app. Every tracking should be subject to scrutiny regarding so important issue of privacy and individual freedoms. So should be COVID 19 tracking app.

But!

Who should evaluate possible threats to individual freedoms?

I will not answer this question directly, but indirectly. Why? Since the question of “who” is supervenient to the question of “on what basis”.

Expected question to the last question would be: on the basis of existing positive legislation.

But wait! Existing positive legislation regulates situations that were common in times when such regulation was written. So it was definitely before the outbreak of COVID 19.

My thesis is that COVID 19 pandemic represents a unique challenge not only for health management but even more for all written and unwritten laws that regulate social behaviours and with that also for all infringements to our freedoms.

If my thesis is valid then all actions in relation to COVID 19 should be first conceptualised anew and later, based on more or less common understanding, findings should lead to upgraded version of written and unwritten laws that govern our social behaviour.

To be very precise: it is unwise and even dangerous to leave the question of COVID 19 tracking app (and all other measures related to COVID 19) to legal experts and any authority that has to take measures based on existing legislation. The new reality is not created on the basis of already existing legislation. And COVID 19 challenges us to conceptualize this new reality first. I’m afraid we have not done it yet.

We should be aware of the fact that tracking devices are not the invention of contemporary societies. Thousands of years ago there were individuals that peeped through windows and tracked individuals of their communities. Since communities in ancient times were small, they could perform their sanitary job without the help of technology. Nowadays tracking is impossible without the support of technology due to the size of communities. But the main sanitary task stays the same.

Yes. Tracing, this breach of individual freedoms, is a sanitary act. It is painful for individual, but, if decentralized and not in the hands of a state, extremely important for the sustainability of any community. The stress is: if not in hands of the state; if not centralised.

I will definitely use this app when available, for the immediate threats are far lower than possible benefits. But at the same time I will try to make sense of this new situation for myself and, if allowed, help others to make sense for them.

Future is too important to allow legal experts to decide about it.