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Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing

For proper implementation of digital contact tracing technologies for fighting against SARS-CoV-2, participants' privacy vulnerability and the uncertainty from the relevant institutions' side could be seen as two core elements that should be dealt with, among others. In this paper, we prop...

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Autores principales: Teng, Yan, Song, Yan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9551307/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36238198
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2022.916809
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author Teng, Yan
Song, Yan
author_facet Teng, Yan
Song, Yan
author_sort Teng, Yan
collection PubMed
description For proper implementation of digital contact tracing technologies for fighting against SARS-CoV-2, participants' privacy vulnerability and the uncertainty from the relevant institutions' side could be seen as two core elements that should be dealt with, among others. In this paper, we propose to understand the current approaches for preserving privacy, referred to as privacy by legislation and privacy by technological design, as distrusting strategies that primarily work to reduce participants' vulnerability by specifying and implementing privacy standards related to this digital solution. We point out that mere distrusting strategies are insufficient for the ethically appropriate development of this digital solution, nor can they eliminate the need for institutional trust that plays an essential role in fostering voluntary support for this solution. To reach well-grounded trust in both an ethical and epistemological sense, we argue that trust in institutions concerning personal data protection in the case of digital contact tracing ought to be built on the relevant institutions' and individuals' goodwill towards the public and their competence in improving the actual effectiveness of this solution. We conclude by clarifying three dimensions, including the purpose, procedure, and outcome, where the relevant trustees can work to signal and justify their intentions and increase their trustworthiness via an effective communication strategy. Given the complementary qualities shown by the distrusting and trusting strategies, a combined strategy including both sorts seems closer to what we expect from the responsible implementation of this digital solution, which could also improve the effectiveness of this institutional response.
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spelling pubmed-95513072022-10-12 Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing Teng, Yan Song, Yan Front Digit Health Digital Health For proper implementation of digital contact tracing technologies for fighting against SARS-CoV-2, participants' privacy vulnerability and the uncertainty from the relevant institutions' side could be seen as two core elements that should be dealt with, among others. In this paper, we propose to understand the current approaches for preserving privacy, referred to as privacy by legislation and privacy by technological design, as distrusting strategies that primarily work to reduce participants' vulnerability by specifying and implementing privacy standards related to this digital solution. We point out that mere distrusting strategies are insufficient for the ethically appropriate development of this digital solution, nor can they eliminate the need for institutional trust that plays an essential role in fostering voluntary support for this solution. To reach well-grounded trust in both an ethical and epistemological sense, we argue that trust in institutions concerning personal data protection in the case of digital contact tracing ought to be built on the relevant institutions' and individuals' goodwill towards the public and their competence in improving the actual effectiveness of this solution. We conclude by clarifying three dimensions, including the purpose, procedure, and outcome, where the relevant trustees can work to signal and justify their intentions and increase their trustworthiness via an effective communication strategy. Given the complementary qualities shown by the distrusting and trusting strategies, a combined strategy including both sorts seems closer to what we expect from the responsible implementation of this digital solution, which could also improve the effectiveness of this institutional response. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9551307/ /pubmed/36238198 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2022.916809 Text en © 2022 Teng and Song. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Digital Health
Teng, Yan
Song, Yan
Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing
title Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing
title_full Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing
title_fullStr Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing
title_full_unstemmed Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing
title_short Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing
title_sort beyond legislation and technological design: the importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing
topic Digital Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9551307/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36238198
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2022.916809
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