From Shadow Profiles to Contact Tracing: Qualitative Research into Consent and Privacy

For many privacy scholars, consent is on life support, if not dead. In July 2020, we held six focus groups in Australia to test this claim by gauging attitudes to consent and privacy, with a spotlight on smartphones. These focus groups included discussion of four case studies: ‘shadow profiles’, eavesdropping by companies on smartphone users, non-consensual government surveillance of its citizens and contact tracing apps developed to combat COVID-19. Our participants expressed concerns about these practices and said they valued individual consent and saw it as a key element of privacy protection. However, they saw the limits of individual consent, saying that the law and the design of digital services also have key roles to play. Building on these findings, we argue for a blend of good law, good design and an appreciation that individual consent is still valued and must be fixed rather than discarded - ideally in ways that are also collective. In other words, consent is dead;long live consent. © The Author/s 2021

Implementing COVIDSafe: The Role of Trustworthiness and Information Privacy Law

Governments worldwide view contact tracing as a key tool to mitigate COVID-19 community transmission. Contact tracing investigations are time consuming and labour intensive. Mobile phone location tracking has been a new data-driven option to potentially obviate investigative inefficiencies. However, using mobile phone apps for contact tracing purposes gives rise to complex privacy issues. Governmental presentation and implementation of contact tracing apps, therefore, requires careful and sensitive delivery of a coherent policy position to establish citizen trust, which is an essential component of uptake and use. This article critically examines the Australian Government’s initial implementation of the COVIDSafe app. We outline a series of implementation misalignments that juxtapose an underpinning regulatory rationality predicated on the implementation of information privacy law protections with rhetorical campaigns to reinforce different justifications for the app’s use. We then examine these implementation misalignments from Mayer and colleagues’ lens of trustworthiness (1995) and its three core domains: ability, integrity and benevolence. The three domains are used to examine how the Australian Government’s implementation strategy provided a confused understanding of processes that enhance trustworthiness in the adoption of new technologies. In conclusion, we provide a better understanding about securing trustworthiness in new technologies through the establishment of a value consensus that requires alignment of regulatory rationales and rhetorical campaigning. © The Author/s 2021

“Quarantined within a quarantine”: COVID-19 and GIS Dynamic Scenario Modeling in Tasmania, Australia

When the Australian state and lone isle of Tasmania went into coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) quarantine lockdown in March, within a quarantine-imposed Australian continent, thinking it was being very prudent, unforeseen was the lurking virus. Australia across January had been watching the global northern hemisphere scenario occurring and by February was preparing to quarantine itself, echoing its existing and long-term biosecurity exclusion regime. On a much grander scale, following through on a previously trialed national pandemic training exercise, no one had factored in the Ruby Princess variable and its major consequences that would require unprecedented pandemic response. The concentrated impact of cruise ship virus dissemination and escalation has been palpable across the world, but the Ruby Princess will remain a disaster in Australia’s history. For Tasmania, several elderly passengers retraveled from Sydney to Tasmania, and a minor cluster has occurred. This chapter contextualizes what has been transpiring in Australia with the pandemic, with particular attention upon Tasmania, including discussion about the new COVIDSafe.App, and then explains the potential application of a Systems Dynamics Modeling exercise of the COVID-19 spread, in collaboration with a custom-built 2D/3D geographic information system (GIS) Dynamic Scenario Planning Model to spatially visualize potential “what-if” scenarios of COVID-19 spread (and other future pandemics) to identify high-risk areas and vulnerable communities in the northern areas of Tasmania that is aiding real-time pattern mapping and preparation work and to further consider and enable the most effective emergency response and recovery scenarios. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.

Should Digital Contact Tracing Technologies be used to Control COVID-19? Perspectives from an Australian Public Deliberation.

Mobile phone-based applications (apps) can promote faster targeted actions to control COVID-19. However, digital contact tracing systems raise concerns about data security, system effectiveness, and their potential to normalise privacy-invasive surveillance technologies. In the absence of mandates, public uptake depends on the acceptability and perceived legitimacy of using technologies that log interactions between individuals to build public health capacity. We report on six online deliberative workshops convened in New South Wales to consider the appropriateness of using the COVIDSafe app to enhance Australian contact tracing systems. All groups took the position (by majority) that the protections enacted in the app design and supporting legislation were appropriate. This support is contingent on several system attributes including: the voluntariness of the COVIDSafe app; that the system relies on proximity rather than location tracking; and, that data access is restricted to local public health practitioners undertaking contact tracing. Despite sustained scepticism in media coverage, there was an underlying willingness to trust Australian governing institutions such that in principle acceptance of the new contact tracing technology was easy to obtain. However, tensions between the need to prove system effectiveness through operational transparency and requirements for privacy protections could be limiting public uptake. Our study shows that informed citizens are willing to trade their privacy for common goods such as COVID-19 suppression. But low case numbers and cautionary public discourses can make trustworthiness difficult to establish because some will only do so when it can be demonstrated that the benefits justify the costs to individuals.

The barriers and enablers to downloading the COVIDSafe app - a topic modelling analysis.

OBJECTIVE: We report a survey in regional Queensland to understand the reasons for suboptimal uptake of the COVIDSafe app. METHODS: A short five-minute electronic survey disseminated to healthcare professionals, mining groups and school communities in the Central Queensland region. Free text responses and their topics were modelled using natural language processing and a latent Dirichlet model. RESULTS: We received a total of 723 responses; of these, 69% had downloaded the app and 31% had not. The respondents' reasons for not downloading the app were grouped under four topics: lack of perceived risk of COVID-19/lack of perceived need and privacy issues; phone-related issues; tracking and misuse of data; and trust, security and credibility. Among the 472 people who downloaded the app and provided text amenable to text mining, the two topics most commonly listed were: to assist with contact tracing; and to return to normal. CONCLUSIONS: This survey of a regional population found that lack of perceived need, concerns around privacy and technical difficulties were the major barriers to users downloading the application. Implications for public health: Health promotion campaigns aimed at increasing the uptake of the COVIDSafe app should focus on promoting how the app will assist with contact tracing to help return to 'normal'. Additionally, health promotors should address the app's impacts on privacy, people's lack of perceived need for the app and technical barriers.

Concerns and Misconceptions About the Australian Government's COVIDSafe App: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.

BACKGROUND: Timely and effective contact tracing is an essential public health measure for curbing the transmission of COVID-19. App-based contact tracing has the potential to optimize the resources of overstretched public health departments. However, its efficiency is dependent on widespread adoption. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the uptake of the Australian Government's COVIDSafe app among Australians and examine the reasons why some Australians have not downloaded the app. METHODS: An online national survey, with representative quotas for age and gender, was conducted between May 8 and May 11, 2020. Participants were excluded if they were a health care professional or had been tested for COVID-19. RESULTS: Of the 1802 potential participants contacted, 289 (16.0%) were excluded prior to completing the survey, 13 (0.7%) declined, and 1500 (83.2%) participated in the survey. Of the 1500 survey participants, 37.3% (n=560) had downloaded the COVIDSafe app, 18.7% (n=280) intended to do so, 27.7% (n=416) refused to do so, and 16.3% (n=244) were undecided. Equally proportioned reasons for not downloading the app included privacy (165/660, 25.0%) and technical concerns (159/660, 24.1%). Other reasons included the belief that social distancing was sufficient and the app was unnecessary (111/660, 16.8%), distrust in the government (73/660, 11.1%), and other miscellaneous responses (eg, apathy and following the decisions of others) (73/660, 11.1%). In addition, knowledge about COVIDSafe varied among participants, as some were confused about its purpose and capabilities. CONCLUSIONS: For the COVIDSafe app to be accepted by the public and used correctly, public health messages need to address the concerns of citizens, specifically privacy, data storage, and technical capabilities. Understanding the specific barriers preventing the uptake of contact tracing apps provides the opportunity to design targeted communication strategies aimed at strengthening public health initiatives, such as downloading and correctly using contact tracing apps.