Evaluating the trade-off between privacy, public health safety, and digital security in a pandemic

Survey of Citizens' Preferences for Combined Contact Tracing App Features During a Pandemic: Conjoint Analysis

BACKGROUND

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increased need for novel solutions such as digital contact tracing apps to mitigate virus spread became apparent. These apps have the potential to enhance public health initiatives through timely contact tracing and infection rate reduction. However, public and academic scrutiny has emerged around the adoption and use of these apps due to privacy concerns.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to investigate public attitudes and preferences for contact tracing apps, specifically in Japan, using conjoint analysis to examine what specifications the public values most in such apps. By offering a nuanced understanding of the values that citizens prioritize, this study can help balance public health benefits and data privacy standards when designing contact tracing apps and serve as reference data for discussions on legal development and social consensus formation in the future.

METHODS

A cross-sectional, web-based questionnaire survey was conducted to determine how various factors related to the development and integration of infectious disease apps affect the public's intention to use such apps. Individuals were recruited anonymously by a survey company. All respondents were asked to indicate their preferences for a combination of basic attributes and infectious disease app features for conjoint analysis. The respondents were randomly divided into 2 groups: one responded to a scenario where the government was assumed to be the entity dealing with infectious disease apps (ie, the government cluster), and the other responded to a scenario where a commercial company was assumed to be this entity (ie, the business cluster). Samples of 500 respondents from each randomly selected group were used as target data.

RESULTS

For the government cluster, the most important attribute in scenario A was distributor rights (42.557), followed by public benefits (29.458), personal health benefits (22.725), and profit sharing (5.260). For the business cluster, the most important attribute was distributor rights (45.870), followed by public benefits (32.896), personal health benefits (13.994), and profit sharing (7.240). Hence, personal health benefits tend to be more important in encouraging active app use than personal financial benefits. However, the factor that increased motivation for app use the most was the public health benefits of cutting infections by half. Further, concern about the use of personal data collected by the app for any secondary purpose was a negative incentive, which was more significant toward app use compared to the other 3 factors.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that potential app users are positively motivated not only by personal health benefits but also by contributing to public health. Thus, a combined approach can be taken to increase app use.

Ethics of Wearable-Based Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Detection

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a major health problem, and immediate treatment is essential for improving the chances of survival. The development of technological solutions to detect out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and alert emergency responders is gaining momentum; multiple research consortia are currently developing wearable technology for this purpose. For the responsible design and implementation of this technology, it is necessary to attend to the ethical implications. This review identifies relevant ethical aspects of wearable-based out-of-hospital cardiac arrest detection according to four key principles of medical ethics. First, aspects related to beneficence concern the effectiveness of the technology. Second, nonmaleficence requires preventing psychological distress associated with wearing the device and raises questions about the desirability of screening. Third, grounded in autonomy are empowerment, the potential reidentification from continuously collected data, issues of data access, bystander privacy, and informed consent. Finally, justice concerns include the risks of algorithmic bias and unequal technology access. Based on this overview and relevant legislation, we formulate design recommendations. We suggest that key elements are device accuracy and reliability, dynamic consent, purpose limitation, and personalization. Further empirical research is needed into the perspectives of stakeholders, including people at risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and their next-of-kin, to achieve a successful and ethically balanced integration of this technology in society.

Analysis of COVID-19 Gov PK app user reviews to determine online privacy concerns of Pakistani citizens

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reaction of Pakistani citizens toward online privacy in the context of the Pakistan Government's COVID-19 app privacy breach.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors implemented supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods, that is, topic modeling and sentiment analysis on Google app store user review data.

Findings

There was no visible concern shown by the citizens toward the COVID-19 app privacy breach, even though it was well highlighted in the news. Other studies have also indicated that concern for online privacy remains low in developing countries, which aligns with the findings of this paper.

Originality/value

Globally COVID-19 apps have been a cause of concern in terms of public privacy. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first in the Pakistani context to show the impact of a well-document privacy breach of a government COVID-19 app.

Regulating emerging technology in times of crisis: Digital contact tracing in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic

In times of crisis, emerging technology can pose major challenges for regulators. They must deal with great uncertainty and urgency related to both the crisis and the technology. To understand such situations, this article studies the revelatory case of privacy regulation of a contact-tracing application called Smittestopp, created in Norway during the COVID-19 crisis. Based on public and organizational documents and 48 interviews, the analysis shows that the Norwegian Data Protection Authority faced several options for regulatory intervention throughout the crisis, and adapted its approach based on intra-crisis experience, regulatees' responses, and different levels of uncertainty and urgency. Building on these findings, the study formulates propositions regarding the regulation of emerging technology during a crisis and regulatory agencies' use of rule-based, idea-based, and norm-based interventions. This study provides insight into how these three types of intervention relate to different aspects of a crisis situation. Furthermore, it stresses the importance of idea-based intervention as a key site of analysis in studying technology that emerges during a crisis.