1 Introduction

The rapid digitization of everyday life holds significant implications for the future of citizenship. While it provides opportunities for enhanced connectivity and efficiency, it also poses challenges to privacy, security, and democratic integrity (Gardenier et al., 2024). Particularly, the proliferation of smartphone-based applications and the increased use of algorithms across various domains accelerate what van Dijck (2014) terms “dataveillance.” Unlike traditional forms of surveillance, dataveillance involves monitoring and collecting data and metadata via online platforms, thereby tracking individual and collective behaviors and movements. This phenomenon is linked to the “mobile turn” (Goggin, 2014), where smartphones have become ubiquitous consumer tools. Many tracking technologies are associated with fitness and health apps, wherein citizens voluntarily monitor their exercise patterns and bodily functions (see, for instance, Lomborg et al., 2018). This trend is part of what Lupton (2016) describes as “the quantified self,” which is related to the proliferation of portable devices and social media culture. However, tracking apps are increasingly utilized by governments and local authorities to monitor citizen movements and behaviors or to regulate access to certain areas. The most notable example is the Chinese regime’s intensive tracking of citizens linked to a social credit system that rewards “societal behavior” and punishes “a-social behavior” (Lee, 2019; Wong & Dobson, 2019). However, other countries have elements of the Chinese system, for instance using technology to determine financial credit scores (Mac Sithigh & Siems, 2019) or engaging in predictive policing (Dencik et al., 2018).

In ethical terms, tracking technologies are particularly pervasive and intrusive when they identify individuals’ positions and movements and combine this information with the monitoring of social relations, habits, and even health data. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated government use of such tracking technologies to identify symptoms, monitor people in quarantine, trace social contacts, and assess infection risks in social spaces. Apps were developed to register those infected, track movements, and warn fellow citizens of possible COVID-positive individuals. In a later phase of the pandemic, these apps were used to regulate and grant access to certain areas, for instance through digital COVID-19 passports. Consequently, aspects of citizens’ health status, spatial movements, and everyday practices were digitized. These processes generate quantified data, leading to the datafication of human bodies and health states (Lupton, 2022, p. 60).

In a meta-review of existing literature on ethical concerns related to pandemic surveillance, Afroogh et al. (2022) found that privacy was the most significant, closely followed by concerns about government surveillance. These concerns were even more pronounced than in typical societal contexts because the use of apps was made semi-compulsory; non-compliance resulted in reduced access to social spaces such as workplaces, restaurants, and public transportation. In Europe, the apps were widely discussed in relation to EU GDPR legislation, leading to some technologies being modified or withdrawn. Politically, there was even debate about whether the apps and related legislation breached national constitutions (Sherer, 2022).

According to Nissenbaum (2009), privacy is intrinsically linked to autonomy and subjectivity. Privacy not only promotes liberty and individual freedom but also safeguards the subjectivity and dignity of the individual. It is designed to protect an individual’s private space and grant certain rights when navigating public spaces. However, with the rise of digital and automated surveillance, these traditional safeguards are significantly challenged, impacting autonomy and the role of citizenship.

As data-based technologies become increasingly pivotal for governance, legislators must navigate the tension between creating economic value and serving the public interest while protecting fundamental rights (Zygmuntowski, 2023). This article critically discusses how this balance was negotiated during the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the use of smartphone-based tracking apps and digital COVID-19 passports, analyzing their impact on traditional understandings of citizenship.

The discussion is situated within a broader societal context, arguing that the relationship between government and the governed has become excessively automated, not only in a technical sense but also in government discourses and policymaking. In essence, technologies and discourses of automation are interrelated; digital innovation legitimizes and strengthens the inherent automation of political logics. This is framed as a politics of necessity, where calculative predictions and technological facts leave little room for political subjectivity and values.

The use of digital apps during the pandemic can be viewed as an acceleration of an existing trend toward increased automation of everyday life, with significant implications for traditional notions of citizenship. These notions are built on the intrinsic values of privacy and respect for individual autonomy and dignity. This paper discusses the consequences for citizenship based on two theoretical frameworks: Michel Foucault’s concept of “biopolitics” and Carl Schmitt’s concept of “a state of exception.” The concluding section examines whether the rapid automation catalyzed by the pandemic was a state of emergency, necessitated by the pandemic threat, or if it represents a more profound change, heralding a new normal for citizenship.

2 Citizenship vs. Bio-Politics: Two Accounts of the Relation Between State and Citizens

Citizenship is what Connolly (1993) has termed an “essentially contested concept,” with multiple interpretations. Marshall (1950) traces the idea of citizenship back to the Age of Enlightenment, when judicial reforms were initiated to secure citizens’ basic civil rights, such as freedom of speech and the rule of law — what Marshall calls “civil citizenship.” This perspective viewed freedom as freedom ”from” something, emphasizing the concept of negative freedom. Subsequently, civil rights were extended to include formal political rights, such as the right to form parties and organizations, which Marshall refers to as political citizenship. In the twentieth century, civil and political rights were further supplemented by social rights, such as entitlements to pensions, unemployment benefits, and paid holidays—what Marshall calls “social citizenship.”

Later conceptualizations of citizenship focus on culture and identity. For instance, Kellner (2003) defines an additional concept of cultural citizenship as “the right to know and speak,” rather than merely “the right to reside and vote.” In the same tradition, Couldry et al. (2007) emphasize that “public connection,” or the sense of empowerment and connectedness, is a crucial aspect of citizenship. However, all these notions are grounded in liberal thought, which acknowledges individual subjectivity and sovereignty, focusing on individual rights and responsibilities, and placing a strong emphasis on subjectivity, autonomy, and privacy. As such, they adhere to Kantian ethical principles, viewing humans as ends in themselves rather than as means.

Traditional ideas of citizenship arose in a culture unlike the present where digitization and datafication are conditions of everyday life. Data-driven communicative infrastructures increasingly shape and mediate our everyday life and social reality (Andersen, 2018: 1136). Thus, new models and concepts for citizenship are needed (Gardenier et al., 2024). Much mainstream literature on mediatization, even within the field of political communication, largely ignores the impact of datafication on citizenship (Voltmer & Sorensen, 2019: 14). A similar gap can be found within the literature of human-computer interaction where the citizen perspective has long been neglected (Preece, 2016).

Sivertsen and Hartley (2023, pp. 4–5) address this challenge, arguing that increasing digitization stratifies citizens based on the diverse ways individuals engage with media, leading to varied levels of civic participation and thus different roles and positions within the citizenry. Consequently, digitization and datafication processes are directly related to changing the rules and hierarchies of citizenship (Breiter & Hepp, 2018). Aligning with the works of Couldry et al. (2007), they emphasize media attention and orientation as crucial aspects of citizenship. New hierarchies emerge between those who follow public politics and feel connected to society and those who do not. These stratifications are evidently related to discussions of the “digital divide,” which focus on unequal resources and capacities for using new online tools, thereby creating further inequalities among citizens (Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008).

We find a different perspective on the relationship between the state and citizens within the concept of biopolitics, most famously defined and discussed by Michel Foucault in his lectures at the Collège de France in 1978-79 (Foucault, 2008). In political philosophical terms, biopolitics is a remarkable antidote to liberal notions of citizenship, as it denotes a top-down relationship between the state and its citizens. It is described and defined as an effective technology of governance by which the state regulates its subjects, their lives, and their bodies. In the biopolitical state, citizens must be healthy, disciplined subjects—good students, workers, soldiers, and taxpayers (Foucault, 2008).

Foucault’s most famous example of biopolitics is the “panopticon,” the architecture of modern prisons that allows intensive surveillance of subjects and inscribes the will of the state in their minds and bodies (Foucault, 1978). He uses the panopticon as a metaphor for modern governmental regimes of control, statistics, registration, and surveillance. Biopolitics is Foucault’s depiction of the administration of life in a territory where the population is the subject. The aim of this administration is to create conditions for survival and above all, to put life in order economically and politically (Peters, 2020, p. 559). It is characteristic of biopolitics that populations are seen and governed as a mass, as means to achieve the ends of governments (Lorenzini, 2021, p. 42).

The increasing use of algorithms in public life and politics is a continuation of biopolitics in the sense that computational processes are used to sort, classify, and hierarchize people, places, objects, and ideas as well as the habits of thought, conduct, and expression that arise in relationship to those processes (Hallinan & Striphas, 2016: 199). In the algorithmic culture, our online identities are algorithmically constructed based on sampled and aggregated data, creating profiles not recognizable to a particular individual (Andersen, 2018: 1143).

Even though biopolitics might be seen as a brute exercise of power and regulations, it is often legitimized as having good intentions, serving the public good, and creating and maintaining efficient government. Biopolitics can be seen as a management of aleatory events compensating for randomness and variations. Biopolitics represents technocratic desire to erase contingency and eliminate the unpredictable (Horvath & Laszlo, 2020: 145). Yet it poses challenges to liberal citizenship values of rights and individual sovereignty.

As biopolitics has also been exercised within the framework of democratic states based on liberal notions of citizenship, it is worth addressing certain contradictions behind the two views. While traditional notions of citizenship emphasize legal and political rights within a specific nation state, Foucault’s concept of biopolitics focuses on the management and regulation of life itself within modern societies. It emphasizes the control of the population and the normalization of behaviors, challenging the traditional boundaries of citizenship and state sovereignty. It transcends the liberal boundaries of governance and extends politics into biological aspects of life and well-being.

Foucault is often criticized by liberal thinkers for his deconstruction (or ignorance) of the subject and its rights. His concepts run contrary to Kantian notions of individual sovereignty and autonomy and of the principle of treating citizens as ends rather than means. However, Foucault is not interested in political subjectivity but is rather focused on the way power is structurally exercised and inscribed in subjects who again reproduce the same power by adhering and conforming. It is an analysis of surveillance and discipline in modern societies, rather than a normative model for democracy.

3 Intrusive Digital Tools During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Contact Tracing Apps and Covid-19 Passports

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the entire planet full force in 2020. After the initial panic at the outset of the pandemic, following TV footage of the situation in heavily COVID-ridden countries like China, Spain and Italy, governments across the world responded with lockdowns, border closings, regulations of movements, and regimes of tests and vaccinations. Politicians argued that the pandemic crisis and the risk of major disturbances of the health system called for swift response and a state of emergency. Although the degree and duration of regulations varied across countries, measures taken were often at the edge of constitutional rights (Karaseva, 2020).

For most Western countries the pandemic formed the most critical societal situation since the Second World War. Apart from occasional outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio, the latest global experience of a pandemic had been the Spanish flu in the aftermath of the First World War. Therefore, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, most people had no experience of pandemic situations and earlier regimes of isolation and segregation, like those from the ages of plague and smallpox. Suddenly, daily life had to be severely regulated and monitored, curfews were imposed, and even personal appearance was regulated through mandatory facemasks and other protective tools. Strict rules on distance and hygiene were imposed in schools, shops, and other public institutions, if those places were kept open at all. Country borders were closed, and movement between regions or even within cities was limited.

After these initial physical measures, governments and private actors across the world started to develop digital solutions to contain and combat the virus. It was argued that technology can scale up traditional epidemiological methods and offer a way to relax restrictive lockdown without sacrificing the protection of citizens (Dubov & Shoptaw, 2020). Governments across the world utilized the newest automated technologies for counting, registration, and surveillance, from advanced statistics calculating future infection rates to strict monitoring of citizens and their movements and encounters. The crisis became a playground for testing evolving surveillance and tracking technologies at a large scale. The pandemic situation led to an epidemiological turn in digital surveillance (Taylor et al., 2020: 11). With the ubiquity of smartphones, it was obvious to use location-based monitoring algorithms and artificial intelligence as a powerful cocktail to combat the spread of the virus and increase public safety. The range of technologies included infection tests, geo-local monitoring tools, and even “digital fences” to ensure the quarantined stayed at home (Gasser et al., 2020).

In the following sections, I will focus on two particularly interesting and debated technologies used in many countries: contact tracing apps and the digital COVID-19 passport.

Smartphone-based apps for tracing social contacts emerged as a significant tool to identify potential infection risks by reporting if someone had been in close contact with an infected individual. These apps were designed to function in physical spaces, tracing individuals encountered and pairing this information with individual infection data. The apps required a complex interplay of location tracking through masts and networks and the registration of interactions between users’ phones. While some apps tracked individual activity patterns, others were based on flow modeling, quantifying and tracking the collective movements of people within specified geographical regions (Gasser et al., 2020, p. 426).

As noted by Tretter (2023), the development of tracking apps became a contest between governments, big tech, and private companies, competing not only for revenue but also for sovereignty and power. Different scenarios unfolded across various countries. Bardus et al. (2022) identified 180 such tracking apps across 152 countries and tested 154. Approximately 75% of these apps were developed by governments, with the remainder created by private companies or multi-stakeholder collaborations. This demonstrates a mainly centralized approach but also a discourse of urgency where government intervention was needed. The authors focused on permission and privacy settings, as well as the legal information associated with the apps. They concluded that the apps often struck a delicate balance between usefulness and privacy, frequently collecting more information than strictly necessary to achieve their objectives. Additionally, the legal documents related to the apps were often difficult to comprehend, leaving users confused about privacy permissions (Bardus et al., 2022).

For the apps to function effectively, they needed to track the precise movements and locations of individuals to within a few meters. Apps tracking individual patterns are, of course, more intrusive than those identifying collective movements, such as when certain places become too crowded, increasing the risk of mass infection. Additionally, there is a distinction between technologies that identify individuals by name (and possibly address) and those that only register locations or IP addresses (Dubov & Shoptaw, 2020, p. W8). The former are more intrusive in terms of privacy and surveillance and were widely used in China and some other Asian countries, where they supplemented strict physical measures like quarantines of entire neighborhoods and stringent movement regulations. In several European countries, including Denmark and Germany, initial app solutions were similarly intrusive regarding privacy but were modified after widespread public concerns, albeit at the expense of effectiveness in infection tracking. This demonstrates a prioritization of individual rights over mere efficiency in democratic countries, whereas in many authoritarian countries citizens were not even allowed to voice their protests.

Another significant decision concerned whether to rely on technology from tech giants like Google and Apple or to develop the apps within a government-controlled context. France, for instance, opted for a centralized, government-developed model, independent of tech giants, but with all the information stored in a central database, which implied high risks of data breaches and misuse. Many other countries, including Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, and Switzerland, chose a decentralized model based on APIs from tech giants Apple and Google (Ranisch et al., 2021, p. 286). API-based apps offer greater protection of privacy and are less vulnerable to hacker attacks but are, on the other hand, dependent on big tech companies rather than government, raising democratic issues of control and power (Csernatoni, 2020, pp. 302-4).

Newlands et al. (2020) highlight that the rapid innovation of tracking technologies often compromised legal compliance and privacy considerations. Technological imperatives were prioritized over privacy concerns. Cho et al. (2020) focus on balancing health concerns, technological innovation, and privacy. Possible solutions to this dilemma are presented by Liu et al. (2020), who focus on technological solutions to ensure user privacy while enabling effective contact tracking. They advocate for cryptographic solutions, emphasizing the importance of preserving user privacy.

Besides the technological challenges of making the apps functional while ensuring users’ privacy, there are significant political and ethical concerns regarding the relationship between government and citizens. Sandvik (2020) discusses the Norwegian tracking app ”Smittestopp” in terms of the societal pressure exerted by authorities to download the app. She argues that discussions about effectiveness and privacy were obscured by a persuasive discourse of necessity, including public shaming of those who did not use the app, labeling them “unpatriotic.” These concerns extend beyond strict privacy issues to the entire social fabric of society, where long-term factors such as trust and societal cohesion, fundamental to citizenship, may be at risk.

In the next phase of the pandemic, governments across the world started to issue digital COVID-19 passports to ease the testing regime and permit movement within and between countries. The launch of these passports was clad in a discourse of “a return to normality”, strongly nudging citizens with COVID-19 fatigue to accept and adopt the technology (Telford et al., 2022). In February 2021, Israel was the first country to implement a digital passport, giving access to cinemas and leisure facilities (Telford et al.: 43). Many other countries followed suit in 2021 allowing opening of borders and less restrictions on travel than in the first year of the pandemic. Although COVID-19 passports sometimes had to be downloaded and printed on paper, they were overwhelmingly based on smartphone apps, allowing for constant updates and confirmation of vaccination status. For instance, the EU countries decided to employ a joint electronic passport based on mobile phone technologies. In the final version, the app showed a QR code that could be scanned by authorities or others to prove that the respective person had a valid vaccination (Arakpogun et al., 2022).

Such digital solutions might enhance existing inequalities among citizenry in terms of the digital divide, leaving the non-digital citizens bewildered or even without access to significant spheres of society. Further, data from passport apps might easily be shared with other government agencies, violating autonomy and privacy. Often private companies were involved in processing the data, leaving users with little control of their data and thereby their privacy, and making personal health information available to non-medical persons (Lyon, 2022). In several countries, most notably in South Korea, the control of digital COVID-19 passports was left to automated machines rather than human officials to minimize infection risks, further depersonalizing and dehumanizing social interactions (Telford et al., 2022: 48).

Such automated regulations of access to public spaces raise serious concerns regarding privacy and autonomy, as well as challenging principles of subjective human judgment inherent in traditional notions of citizenship. The discourse surrounding the implementation of the passport is also problematic in terms of principles of deliberation and democratic trust. When everyone feels at risk due to the virus, the logic suggests that the acceptability of exceptional measures and enhanced digital surveillance is higher than under normal democratic circumstances (Csernatoni, 2020, p. 307).

In an evaluation of ethical concerns related to pandemic management, Ranisch et al. (2021: 289) balance five concerns: pandemic management, technological aspects, pragmatic aspects, and the political and social contexts. The first two are related to scientific issues: how can the pandemic be effectively combatted, and which technical solutions are adequate? The latter two address the formal democratic context in terms of constitutional rights and privacy as well as the social and public trust necessary to ensure compliance with the measures. In between we find the pragmatic aspects, the balance between pandemic concerns and the consequences for social and political citizenship in the short and long run, that is exactly the focus here.

Reviewing the debate and literature related to digital pandemic technologies, privacy emerges as the foremost concern. However, even if policymakers and developers achieve the right balance between privacy and effectiveness, several ethical issues remain. As mentioned, solutions were often developed through public-private partnerships, raising questions about private companies’ handling of and access to private health data. Can they be held to the same standards of confidentiality and transparency expected of public authorities? Finally, there is the issue of the digital divide; the use and understanding of digital technologies are not universal, and marginalized or disenfranchised citizens might be at risk of neglect and abuse in digital pandemic management (Ferretti & Vayena, 2022).

Samuel et al. (2022) further examine this dilemma by advocating for anticipatory governance, which balances health benefits with public concerns about privacy and surveillance. They address the widespread distrust in government exacerbated by excessive digital measures. Proportionality is key, but the critical question is whether the use of digital tracking and surveillance apps has already reached a point of no return, with significant implications for traditional notions of citizenship.

4 The Pandemic as an Example of Biopolitics

The pandemic crisis formed a complex situation of technical solutions, societal discourses of fear and anxiety and detailed regulations of everyday physical life. Social distancing, often rigorously described and measured, compulsory quarantines upon infection or at risk of infection, and compulsory face masks were mandated in most countries. In countries like Spain and Italy, initially hard hit by the virus, face masks were mandated even outdoors and there were excessive limits on movements, restricted to the most necessary functions for maintaining physical life. In the UK the measures became almost paternalistic with the recommendations of 20 s of hand washing and strict limits on outdoor exercise. The discipline was exercised and maintained through an escalating system of fines (Jayasinghe et al., 2022).

The pandemic situation showed that values of citizenship and personal rights, often taken for granted in Western societies, might easily be disturbed and the liberal, democratic notion of citizenship might be challenged. The digital and physical COVID-19 regulations resemble the regime described by Michel Foucault in his famous account of the regulations of a plague-ridden city in late Medieval France:

The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies - this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city (Foucault, 1978: 198)

The pandemic digital regime forms a contemporary example of biopolitics, exercised on a large, societal scale, based on digital technologies of algorithmic monitoring and prediction, combined with political decision making based on advanced calculations. It highlights how traditional understandings of citizenship and individual rights are challenged by increasing and automated surveillance based on digital and networked technologies, legitimized by reasons of order, security, and safety (Andrejevic, 2019). For instance, the former Danish Minister of Justice Nick Hækkerup has claimed that “surveillance leads to more freedom” (Christensen, 2020), fundamentally challenging rights-based understandings of autonomy and citizenship.

M.A. Peters takes the argument a step further and argues that the pandemic regime, based on the fear of infection and the application of adherent medical measures, has got a new dimension with bio-information, where

These two forces of new biology and information coalesce, overlap and intermingle in the logic that drives bioinformatics and bio-informational capitalism that is self-renewing in the sense that it can change and renew the material basis for life and capital as well as reprogram itself (Peters, 2020: 559)

Bio-information and biometrics are already pervasive in access systems based on fingerprints, in fitness apps, and in facial recognition technologies (Ajana, 2012). Foucault himself did not live to see the exploitation of DNA, genetic science, and the abundance of biological data used for informing policies but would probably have seconded Peters’ analysis. Bio-information is yet another tool in the statistical power of governments. More data means that citizens can be even further surveilled, monitored, taxed, regulated and disciplined. Data abundance strengthens panoptic power.

On the other hand, governments must balance a triad of economic concerns, the public good, and individual rights. Achieving this balance is challenging. While responses to the COVID-19 pandemic exemplify modern biopolitics, one might argue that inaction could have resulted in mass deaths and the collapse of health systems. Digital biopolitics served as a tool, but the above sections demonstrate that Western governments actually considered privacy and citizens’ rights when navigating these concerns, whereas more authoritarian regimes prioritized efficiency.

5 The Pandemic as a State of Exception or a New Normal?

The question arises whether the pandemic was an extreme political situation, a state of exception, or rather a continuation of biopolitics through new means. From the outside, the pandemic created a state of emergency. Some countries even declared martial law, allowing the suspension of certain constitutional rights and granting special powers to the police and military. Regulatory policies were rapidly pushed through parliaments, and tracking apps and COVID-19 passports were launched as soon as the technology was available, with limited prior ethical considerations.

From a political theoretical perspective, the situation resembled what political philosopher Schmitt (2014 [1921]) defined as a state of exception (in German: Ausnahmezustand). This concept refers to a situation where the sovereign (government) can transcend the rule of law for the sake of the public good. Schmitt’s aim is to establish a political “theology” to identify the core mechanisms and legitimation of the political, the raison d’être behind politics (Silva & Higuera, 2021, p. 508). For Schmitt, the state of exception marks a limit, a demarcation between normal politics and the exceptional. It can be seen as a principle that defines when normal political rights and procedures might be suspended. The public good or public safety can be invoked to legitimize political decisions that move beyond the normal and the strictly legal. This, of course, is a delicate balance, as governments were navigating uncharted territory during the pandemic. No one had experienced a similar situation, and the actual fatality of the virus, as well as the eventual outcome, was unknown.

Italian sociologist Giorgio Agamben is among the toughest and most controversial critics of pandemic regulations. He criticizes government pandemic policies as a tool for excessive abuse of power:

Faced with the frenetic, irrational and entirely unfounded emergency measures…. why do the media and the authorities do their utmost to spread a state of panic, thus provoking an authentic state of exception with serious limitations on movement and a suspension of daily life in entire regions? (Agamben, 2020)

For Agamben, the virus is used as a tool for inventing politics of fear, serving the governments’ interest in increasing and centralizing power. For him, the pandemic has enabled the tendency to use the extraordinary as a normal paradigm for government.

Agamben’s severe criticism has not gone unnoticed and uncriticized. For instance, Slavoj Zizek accuses Agamben of perceived neglect of the seriousness of the pandemic threat and right-wing populism. He describes Agamben’s stand as unethical (Peters, 2020). Horvath and Lovasz (2020: 150) criticize Agamben’s works on the pandemic an “apocalyptic conspiracy of governance against the populace”.

Nonetheless, was the pandemic a very special situation? Whereas Foucault’s concept of biopolitics forms a historical analysis of the rise of modernity and societal order, Schmitt discusses the exceptions from normality, the cases where legislation and normal political rights are suspended. Several scholars have reflected upon Schmitt’s and Agamben’s concepts of state of exception in the pandemic context. For Csernatoni (2020: 307) the state of emergency induced by the pandemic has become the permanent condition of political life via the unusual extension of governmental powers to tackle the pandemic. Further, it has generated a perverse vicious circle:

the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that has been induced by governments themselves, the same governments that are now intervening in order to satisfy that desire. (Silva & Higuera, 2021: 505)

Silva & Higuera suggest that the pandemic policies represent a permanent state of exception, legitimized by science. For them “in the pandemic crisis science has become the new religion and takes from religion its forms and strategies of governing life, all while using scientific arguments” (504). On the other hand, most countries have returned to a state of normality and suspended virtually all pandemic limitations and regulations. Further, as mentioned, many governments showed significant concerns for democratic values and privacy and abandoned apps and other technologies that were criticized or considered too intrusive.

However, governments and decision-makers have learned lessons for future crises and population control during the pandemic. Automated technologies are increasingly used in regulatory and legal contexts, for instance in the case of predictive policing now widely applied in the UK (Dencik, 2018). Government surveillance tasks are outsourced to private companies, for instance Palantir, raising critical problems for data privacy and protection of civil rights (Iliadis & Acker, 2022).

The automation of politics goes beyond actual technologies; the optimism of technological capacities serves as inspiration for political decision-making, increasingly clad in a scientific language of graphs and mathematical calculations, and therefore considered objective and unquestionable, leaving little room for political bargaining. Political negotiations and reflections are substituted by automated reactions based on datafication, surveillance, and algorithmic predictions to ever-occurring political challenges. The general ethical implications of algorithms in health care, criminal justice, and social services are under scrutiny (Diakopoulus, 2016).

The pandemic also highlighted that policies and regulations are increasingly based on algorithmic technologies of which decision makers might have limited control and insight, thus leaving maintenance of democratic transparency in the hands of doctors and technicians. In other words, politics itself becomes automated, removing subjective and reflective judgement from politics, and ultimately eliminating the political responsibility behind decisions. Division of powers might be replaced by a liquid political system where decisions, consequences, and the division of powers float in a cloud of algorithms, technological discourses, and pseudo-decisions. This might have severe ethical consequences for transparency, responsibility and autonomy, core concepts in a citizenship-based relation between government and the governed.

6 Conclusion: The Future of Citizenship?

In the sections above, I have demonstrated how automated digital technologies, exemplified with tracking apps and digital COVID passports employed during the pandemic, are challenging privacy, autonomy, and individual sovereignty, rights and principles inherent in liberal notions of citizenship that have been fundamental in Western societies for nearly two centuries.

The pandemic crisis has been an example of the increasing use of algorithms and machine learning across various domains, not the least regarding health care where society has become deeply reliant on these technologies. The pandemic state of exception has necessitated and legalized a temporary suspension of normal civil rights and replaced them with spatial ordering, automated surveillance, and the application of advanced and intrusive digital monitoring tools. Traditional distinctions between public and private have been partly eradicated by viral circumstances.

I have discussed how tracking apps and digital COVID passports are a modern example of biopolitical regulations monitoring everyday life, movements, and bodily functions. They were mostly accepted by citizens based on a combination of sticks and carrots: fines for not adhering and freer movements and access to travel if complying. The apps were initiated mainly by governments but were developed and provided by a mix of public and private actors, accentuating the competition for sovereignty and power between different spheres of society. While striving for function and efficiency, at least Western governments demonstrated concerns for privacy and individual rights, maintaining a difficult balance.

I have argued that the COVID technologies are examples of a larger trend, in terms of technologies as well as discourses of government. Two different forms of automation are at play: first, the automation inherent in digital, algorithmically based technologies for tracking and monitoring; and, second, the automation that spills over in political discourses and actual decision making where subjectivity and responsibility are increasingly replaced by automated decision making and the politics of necessity, clad in a scientific and statistical language. In the UK, for instance, the government subscribed to politics of calculations identifying those necessary for societal functions to be exempt from certain restrictions. Arguments were supported by visualizations of steep exponential graphs showing future infection rates if not reacting. The logos of scientists and statistical agencies was supplemented by the ethos of politicians appealing to the responsibility and sensibility of citizens (Jayasinghe, 2022). Political decisions were no longer based on subjective standpoints and values but on brute necessity based on algorithmic calculations, often beyond public scrutiny.

Although most regulations and pandemic technologies were temporary and have now been abandoned, the pandemic has strengthened an existing movement towards automated decision making based on discourses of technology characterized by a technical, medical language arguing with a logos of necessity. With the discourse of automation, governments seek to provide and affirm a certainty, a protection against unforeseen events, thus replacing faith and religion as the ultimate source of faith and comfort.

As more areas of social and political life are based on automated technologies, from calculation of insurance policies to evaluation and treatment in the health sector, actual human, subjective decision making might play a minor role. This raises substantial questions for citizenship, and issues like subjectivity, autonomy, and civil rights. When more decisions are automated and politics is increasingly based on algorithmic calculations, the locus and thereby responsibility of government becomes harder to identify (Andrejevic, 2019). Automated politics and decision making thus challenges liberal democratic concepts of subjectivity and human rights, the relationship between rulers and the ruled, as well as changing the role of media as arbiters of this relationship.

In Kantian terms, automated judgment seems to increasingly replace reflective judgment. He distinguishes reflective judgement from more automated ways of reasoning (Hui, 2021). It plays a pivotal role in his thinking on human autonomy, human rights, and democracy. It is a core fundament of liberal democracy, as it allows for reflection and deliberation and safeguards transparency, responsibility, and accountability of the rulers (Andrejevic, 2019: 64). With automated rather than reflective judgement, the fundament of democracy is at stake. A subject-centered notion of citizenship is inherently based on three core principles: privacy, subjectivity, and reflective judgment. All three are increasingly challenged by Foucauldian biopolitics of automated surveillance and decision making as a regulatory force, dehumanizing individuals as well as policies. The pandemic crisis has moved the borders of what is accepted by governments and citizens and has normalized far-reaching tools of registration, calculation, and surveillance. Where traditional concepts of citizenship have focused on individual rights, responsibilities, and participation in civic life, biopolitics emphasizes a management and regulation of populations with less focus on individual agency and more on statistical analysis and control mechanisms.

The policies and technologies employed during the pandemic have had significant vestiges, partly due to the perceived success of automated policymaking. However, such heavy reliance on automation is best saved for exceptional circumstances and should not become the new normal as automated public policymaking risks undermining reflection and important aspects of citizenship in participatory democracy.