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Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom

The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic may require governments to use privacy-encroaching technologies to help contain its spread. One technology involves co-location tracking through mobile Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth to permit health agencies to monitor people’s contact with each other, thereby trigger...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lewandowsky, Stephan, Dennis, Simon, Perfors, Andrew, Kashima, Yoshihisa, White, Joshua P., Garrett, Paul, Little, Daniel R., Yesilada, Muhsin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7822290/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33481877
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245740
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author Lewandowsky, Stephan
Dennis, Simon
Perfors, Andrew
Kashima, Yoshihisa
White, Joshua P.
Garrett, Paul
Little, Daniel R.
Yesilada, Muhsin
author_facet Lewandowsky, Stephan
Dennis, Simon
Perfors, Andrew
Kashima, Yoshihisa
White, Joshua P.
Garrett, Paul
Little, Daniel R.
Yesilada, Muhsin
author_sort Lewandowsky, Stephan
collection PubMed
description The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic may require governments to use privacy-encroaching technologies to help contain its spread. One technology involves co-location tracking through mobile Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth to permit health agencies to monitor people’s contact with each other, thereby triggering targeted social-distancing when a person turns out to be infected. The effectiveness of tracking relies on the willingness of the population to support such privacy encroaching measures. We report the results of two large surveys in the United Kingdom, conducted during the peak of the pandemic, that probe people’s attitudes towards various tracking technologies. The results show that by and large there is widespread acceptance for co-location tracking. Acceptance increases when the measures are explicitly time-limited and come with opt-out clauses or other assurances of privacy. Another possible future technology to control the pandemic involves “immunity passports”, which could be issued to people who carry antibodies for the COVID-19 virus, potentially implying that they are immune and therefore unable to spread the virus to other people. Immunity passports have been considered as a potential future step to manage the pandemic. We probe people’s attitudes towards immunity passports and find considerable support overall, although around 20% of the public strongly oppose passports.
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spelling pubmed-78222902021-01-29 Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom Lewandowsky, Stephan Dennis, Simon Perfors, Andrew Kashima, Yoshihisa White, Joshua P. Garrett, Paul Little, Daniel R. Yesilada, Muhsin PLoS One Research Article The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic may require governments to use privacy-encroaching technologies to help contain its spread. One technology involves co-location tracking through mobile Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth to permit health agencies to monitor people’s contact with each other, thereby triggering targeted social-distancing when a person turns out to be infected. The effectiveness of tracking relies on the willingness of the population to support such privacy encroaching measures. We report the results of two large surveys in the United Kingdom, conducted during the peak of the pandemic, that probe people’s attitudes towards various tracking technologies. The results show that by and large there is widespread acceptance for co-location tracking. Acceptance increases when the measures are explicitly time-limited and come with opt-out clauses or other assurances of privacy. Another possible future technology to control the pandemic involves “immunity passports”, which could be issued to people who carry antibodies for the COVID-19 virus, potentially implying that they are immune and therefore unable to spread the virus to other people. Immunity passports have been considered as a potential future step to manage the pandemic. We probe people’s attitudes towards immunity passports and find considerable support overall, although around 20% of the public strongly oppose passports. Public Library of Science 2021-01-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7822290/ /pubmed/33481877 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245740 Text en © 2021 Lewandowsky et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lewandowsky, Stephan
Dennis, Simon
Perfors, Andrew
Kashima, Yoshihisa
White, Joshua P.
Garrett, Paul
Little, Daniel R.
Yesilada, Muhsin
Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
title Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
title_full Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
title_fullStr Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
title_full_unstemmed Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
title_short Public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
title_sort public acceptance of privacy-encroaching policies to address the covid-19 pandemic in the united kingdom
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7822290/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33481877
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245740
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