In the weeks following the declaration of Covid-19 as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, several companies and countries have unveiled plans to implement a wide range of digital technologies to limit the spread of Covid-19, including contact tracing apps to track and mitigate the spread of Covid-19.
Countries such as South Korea, Singapore, and China have succeeded in containing the Covid-19 pandemic using tracking technologies. However, their models could not be adopted in the EU as they involved the bulk collection, access and storage of health data and location data, which is prohibited under EU data protection law. Many voices have raised security and privacy concerns about using contact tracing as well as broader concerns about their efficiency. There has been significant public discussion about the tension between effective technology-based contact tracing and the privacy of individuals across all EU countries.
Ireland was praised for the design of its Covid tracker application, and the transparency through which NearForm and HSE addressed privacy issues. HSE provided a lot of information on their website regarding the data processing, and the data protection impact assessment of the application was made available as well. The source code of the application is also open source. However, concerns about privacy were raised for instance by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties due to lack of transparency from Apple and Google's side in terms of their involvement in the tracker app. A series of questions was also raised about the efficiency of the application in the absence of conclusive data.
The core issue is though, what is the public opinion? Are the people in Ireland concerned about their privacy? Are these concerns preventing them from adopting the Covid tracker app? Is their attitude towards privacy changed in Covid-19 times?
The PRIVATT project funded by Science Foundation Ireland and led by Dublin City University attempts to answer these questions. PRIVATT is a multidisciplinary project that involves two research centres, LERO and ADAPT, and three other institutions: Trinity College Dublin, National College of Ireland and Middlesex University London. The project team collaborates with HSE, Future of Privacy Forum, Microsoft Ireland, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi), Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ericsson, International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), Data Protection Commission of Ireland, Facebook, and Digital Rights Ireland. PRIVATT's goal is to provide specific recommendations to the government and private and public stakeholders on the technological solutions adopted in Ireland to control the spread of the virus.
An initial pilot study conducted by the project team showed that although the people living in Ireland are aware and protective of their privacy, during the pandemic they showed an increased willingness of sharing their personal data in the interest of saving lives. The study revealed a huge increase, from 12 per cent pre-pandemic to 61 per cent now, of people willing to share personal data that includes location, contacts and medical data.
55 per cent of the participants in the pilot are using the Covid tracker application. However, concerns about the application were voiced:
- 30 per cent of the respondents fear that it will be used as a surveillance tool beyond the scope of Covid-19
- 28 per cent of the respondents have privacy concerns in relation to the application.
The feedback from the participants in the pilot varies from "Covid is used by government to extend surveillance beyond necessity" and the refusal to use the application on the basis of lack of trust in government, HSE and Google, to "we're all in this together and if the use of an app can help to avoid going through another countrywide lockdown, then it is worth using and mandatory use should be considered."
But what is the opinion that characterizes most the Irish public? The project team launched this national survey, which will be open until the end of December, in order to provide an answer to this question. Have your say by taking the survey.