Digital Surveillance Technologies to Combat COVID-19: A Contemporary View

Since the genesis case was confirmed in Wuhan, China in late 2019, the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading all over the world at an accelerating rate. Almost immediately, IoT technologies were deployed in various surveillance scenarios as part of an effort to combat the pandemic. Among the emerging solutions, contact tracing mobile applications have been playing an effective role to help stem the spread of the virus by tracking individuals and those they come into exposure with. This paper aims at providing a panoramic view of the digital tracking technologies that have been utilized so far in response to the pandemic. We particularly provide a detailed analysis of 47 contact tracing mobile applications that emerged in response to COVID-19. We accompany our analysis with a discussion on the privacy and the technology / social constraints that may challenge the deployment of these applications as digital surveillance platforms.