{"id":2292,"date":"2020-04-01T11:14:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T11:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gronenonline.com\/_gronen1\/?p=2292"},"modified":"2020-04-01T11:14:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T11:14:24","slug":"privacy-in-the-age-of-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gronenonline.com\/_gronen1\/2020\/04\/01\/privacy-in-the-age-of-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy In The Age Of A Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogger:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kirsten Martin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lindner-Gambal Associate Professor of Business Ethics<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

George Washington University.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If we are going to end social distancing, we will need to find a way to know who has COVID-19 and where they are.\u00a0 Temperature and symptom tracking, testing, and contact tracing are regularly mentioned as a part of long-term solutions.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 This is a lot of data about individuals that will be tracked and reported by businesses and government agencies. \u00a0Actions will be taken based on this data \u2013 individuals will be told to quarantine, businesses will be told to shut down, communities will be told to stay at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Designing a data collection system that is trusted and regulated will be key for a sustainable solution.\u00a0 As a business school professor, regulation is not my answer to most problems.\u00a0 However, the intimacy of the data needed and the breadth of the collection required will necessitate strict regulations since we do not have trusted organizations to do this well (to be blunt). Data about individuals is covertly captured and aggregated by unknown companies. So it is not surprising to find location data aggregators and social networking companies suddenly able to provide the travel patterns of individuals to track the virus.[2]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s consider what will not<\/u> work:\u00a0 having apps leak our location data to commercial data aggregators who maintain a dataset of identifiable location history data that is for sale; or having businesses collect our temperatures and symptoms \u2013 as employees or as customers \u2013 and then using that data to report pandemic concerns as well as keeping the data for later marketing or employment decisions.[3]<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two rules to keep in mind when planning data collection:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We regularly share information with a person or organization with specific privacy expectations around how that information will be used and shared (Martin 2016; Nissenbaum 2010). Data collected to track a pandemic is no different.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. If privacy expectations are not respected, then people stop sharing their data or start subverting the data collection system. In other areas of life, we give false information or use technology to block trackers.\u00a0 However, tracking a possible outbreak of a virus is a situation where we need better, accurate, less biased data collection.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Fortunately, we have done this before.\u00a0 Consider the Census.\u00a0 We generally share information about ourselves and our homes with an understanding that the information will be protected within the Census Bureau.\u00a0 However, Census data is heavily regulated.\u00a0 Within the Census Bureau, only small number of people have access to the individualized data \u2013 that data where you and I can be identified.\u00a0 Otherwise, researchers, reporters, statisticians, economists, etc work with Census data at block or anonymized level. There are clear rules about what organizations can have access to that data.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What this means is that data collectors, aggregators, and controllers of our location and health data need to be highly trusted and regulated organizations.\u00a0 In general:\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n