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Attitudes to digital contact tracing: citizens do not always prioritise privacy and prefer a centralised NHS system over a decentralised one.
Citizens’ concerns about data privacy may reduce adoption of COVID-19 contact tracing apps, making them less effective. Based on a choice experiment (conjoint experiment), Laszlo Horvath, Susan Banducci, and Oliver James find that citizens do not always prioritise privacy and prefer a centralised NHS system. They also find support for a mixture of contact tracing done digitally with limited human involvement. On the basis of these findings, they argue that the potential for the adoption of such apps in the UK appears high.
The government recently rolled out its contact tracing app in England and Wales. This launch came about after many stops and starts in developing and trialling an app – six months behind Singapore, the first country to adopt an app, and four months behind the first European apps in Italy and France. An element of a successful test and trace system, digital contact tracing relies on mobile applications and wearable technologies to record when users are in close proximity to one another for an extended period of time, and then notify a user if one of their contacts has tested positive for COVID-19. The app launched in England and Wales, which relies on existing Apple and Google technology to record contacts on the handheld device, also includes features where users can scan a QR code to record their location as well as an isolation counter to keep track of the days spent in isolation if needed.
For effective deployment of the new technology, public trust and confidence is key. Initial interpretations of an Oxford study suggested uptake and use would need to be around 60% for a contact tracing app to be successful, although recent estimates clarify that digital contact tracing is successful at much lower rates as well (at 15%) if combined with other interventions. Yet there is more to confidence-building than those initial adoption rates. In the words of an Isle of Wight GP: “My concern when the public […] will feel ‘what’s in it for me’ and be disincentivised. The truth is very little is in it for them other than the greater good,” the BBC quotes.
Our research was motivated by concerns about privacy as a limit to potential for citizen take-up of apps. In fact, using a conjoint experimental design, we found that citizens do not always prioritise privacy but give high preference to a centralised system led by the NHS over a decentralised system such as the one rolled out. This may be related to the strong support for the NHS during the crisis, one manifestation of this having been the nationwide clap for NHS carers, and the perception that the NHS should be part of the solution for the health crisis. Even when we highlighted a salient threat of unauthorised access or data theft, it did not significantly alter respondents’ preferences. We further find that citizens tend to support a mixture of contact tracing done digitally with limited human involvement. On the basis of these findings, the potential for adoption of apps appears high.
Earlier in the summer, and just weeks after our data collection finished, decisionmakers in the UK abandoned the NHS-led centralised system. According to news reports, this had more to do with technical failure than privacy concerns, though earlier the government insisted that the existence of the centralised NHS server improves the process of contact tracing by making audits and system adaptation possible while also minimising the number of low-risk notifications. While decentralised systems, such as the one being rolled out now, are praised for better overall privacy-preserving features, the lack of central oversight does limit human involvement – in practice, however, this is a legislative feature. After the failure of the first tracking app, it is unclear how meaningfully digital contact tracing will be integrated with the other elements of the test and trace process.
Our findings also highlight additional questions about how citizens’ relationship with their public health authorities affects cooperation with initiatives like digital contact tracing. In the UK, a long history of publicly funded, largely free at point of delivery, high-profile healthcare appears to have created the pre-conditions supportive to cooperate with national public health programmes. This opportunity has not so far been sufficiently exploited but could bode well for adoption of the new app system now that it is finally being rolled out for England and Wales.
The initial uptake of the ‘Protect Scotland’ mobile app launched by NHS Scotland earlier in September is consistent with this view, with over one million downloads within the first week. The challenge will be making sure the government keeps its side of the bargain in rapidly testing, quickly turning around results and then, for those who test positive, tracing contact – providing information quickly enough to those who were potentially exposed to the virus to isolate themselves before individuals transmit the infection to others. The app is only intended to improve the efficiency of the latter stage of an effective test and trace system. As the recent estimates indicate, there are significant issues with the first stages.
It is accepted even among those who are developing and promoting a contact tracing app that it is one tool in a comprehensive test and trace programme. Even if the app is enthusiastically downloaded and used by individual if the rest of the test and trace system, including effective and speedy testing and human contact tracing, is not delivering, the initial enthusiasm on the part of citizens to cooperate may wane.
originally posted at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/uk-attitudes-to-digital-contact-tracing/
No, even this time is not that different COVID-19, the sudden and mysterious death of the SGP and European integration
By Jonathan C. Kamkhaji University of Exeter associate fellow and Polytechnic University of Milan
What if, within a couple of weeks, the term limit for US presidency was removed? What if, within the same couple of weeks, the UK abandoned its signature first-past-the-post and turned to proportional representation? What if, within the same limited amount of time, Italy surrendered perfect bicameralism or France rejected semi-presidentialism? Although these may seem outlandish questions, the magnitude and pace of the change triggered by COVID-19 on economic policy coordination within Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) resembled that of the above hyperboles.
In a nutshell, the European Union (EU), less than a month after the epidemic curve started its raise in Italy in February, simply suspended its much contested and polarizing mechanism for multilateral economic surveillance – the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP).
Literally in the blink of an eye, those rules that seemed to be, if not eternal, at least stable and structural elements of economic policy coordination within the EMU and key to guarantee its stability and trustworthiness vis-à-vis global markets and investors, disappeared. Technically, they were simply put in abeyance not to get in the way of Member States’ countercyclical fiscal expansions. Practically, the set of rules and parameters to which EMU Member States had voluntarily agreed to subscribe in order to deter fiscal profligacy and extreme financial follies since the early 90s have been discretely set aside for an indefinite amount of time – and no mayhem has, as of yet, unfolded in international financial and debt markets. This is even more remarkable if we realize that the suspension of the disciplinarian mechanism took place against a war-like global scenario poised to mark worst global GDP contraction of the last century.
Needless to say, this change is having and will have far-reaching implications for EU economies and economic and political integration, but I think that while these implications are still brewing within the EU (with the establishment of recovery funds and true fiscal solidarity as the main themes) it is more important, for now, to focus on how this sudden stop and reversal of rules for fiscal discipline has materialised. This is because the EU (and we…) live in times of polycrises, that is, crises that are multiple and overlapping, creating thereof polycleavages. Some go as far as arguing that the whole EU decisions and policy making is undergoing a process of crisisification, understood as the normalization of “crisis‐oriented methods for arriving at collective decisions”. What’s remarkable, however, is not simply the accumulation of crises and its influence on EU decision and policy making, but rather the fact that the EU is actually deepening its economic and political integration, not despite the crises, but through the crises.
Then, if crisis mood has become the new normal for the EU, and crises indeed have the potential to deepen integration, the question is how to explain this further quantum leap in terms of existing models and theory of integration. At the outset, we note that the EU, although entangled in and somewhat plagued by its fragmented governance, has a penchant, at least in the economic realm, for spot, landmark political decisions – like the decisions to renege on the no-bailout clause of Maastricht and rescue Greece in 2010, or to reinterpret monetary neutrality and do “whatever it takes” to save the common currency. Interestingly, those landmark decisions, like the one suspending the SGP, were purely political and came with little or no policy attached.
In all of these crises it is only ex post, after the grand political declarations have been fed to the public, that policy commences its engine, crucially surfing on the feedback of the initial declaration effect. A similar dynamic is captured by a number of new models of integration and crisis management. One of such models is failing forward. According to the model, intergovernmental decision making, which typically occurs in times of crisis, systematically leads to incomplete institutional design. The latter stimulates functional spill overs which in turn lead to further crisis. Crises are then faced again by piecemeal intergovernmental decisions which sow the seeds of future crises and failure. As a result, the EU invariably fails forward. Applying the insight of this model to the current crisis may be depressing but in fact we can already see the merits of the failing forward argument when we observe the massive political conflict which unfolded after the decision of suspending the SGP and rethinking the whole fiscal arm (and economic governance) of EMU. Call me a pessimist, but a piecemeal, incomplete integration of fiscal policies is still more likely than the comprehensive reform the EU needs in the fiscal domain. Yet again, a stern political turn in the right direction mitigated by incremental and insufficient policy instrumentation and institutions.
Another model which draws on contested governance and comes to interesting conclusions about crisis management and integration is presented by Jabko in its sociopsychological account of the Eurozone crisis of 2010-2013. This contribution points to the highly guarded boundaries of policy paradigms to show how decisions taken under conditions of extreme uncertainty (typical of crises) defy paradigmatic expectations and conform instead to malleable repertoires. As crisis decision making is constrained by material and cognitive limitations, the resort to rigid blueprints for action like paradigms takes place post hoc, in the policy phase, but is hardly observable in the context of the single decision which triggers the whole process of change. Yet again, this argument may lead to bitter conclusions. If suspending the SGP may have been a correct decision pushed by the acuteness of the crisis, and defying more than 20 years of ordoliberal paradigm, the construction of institutions and policy around this decision may bring us back, again, to an incomplete design of fiscal integration.
The last model which may explain the sudden and mysterious death of the SGP is contingent learning. According to this model, in episodes crisis management characterized by stress, uncertainty, time pressure and demands for rapid action, real-time policy change takes place through associative processes of contingent learning and the nature and scope of this behavioural change is greater than re-design and incremental adaptations. In change-or-die situations we find accidental heroes. They produce significant change and only later they reflect on ‘what have we done’ and start drawing inferences from experience, thus entering the world of classical policy learning – and policy making. If we stick to this model, we have then to hope for an ex post learning process which does not go back to the tenets of the old paradigms once the storm has been cushioned.
In any case, even this time does not seem to be different: existential threats provide the potential to lead in the right direction, but a little recovery may be enough to stick to the old, failing principles and decisional traps.
The impact of Brexit on Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) cooperation and safety and security in the UK and the European Union
Bill Tupman, Honorary Fellow, Centre for European Governance, University of Exeter
June 25, 2020
As Brexit approaches one of many questions is, what will its impact be on Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) cooperation and consequently on safety and security in the UK and the European Union? An unanticipated but related question is: what will the impact of Covid-19 be on the way crime is organised and hence on JHA?
The UK has always been an outlier in European Justice and Home Affairs policy. The adversarial system, the absence of judicial supervision of investigation, trial by jury and the Common Law system were the main obstacles to cooperation between England and Wales (but not Scotland which has a procuratorial system) and the police and courts in the rest of Europe, with the possible exception of Ireland. The ability and skill of UK detectives were admired as was the bottom-up nature of British policing: including high discretion of the individual police officer, absence of a direct entry officer force, unarmed policing, service policing, absence of political control and consequently policing without fear and favour. The stability of the British legal system was much admired, too, although this stability has been absent in recent years with constant legislative change in investigative and criminal law. In contrast the rest of the European Union followed Napoleonic models and what has been referred to as a Civil Law system, although, in fact there were and are two competing systems of judicial supervision: judge-led and prosecutor-led.
Justice and Home Affairs cooperation began as a response to a perceived threat from organised crime terrorism and immigration to stability and prosperity in the EU after the removal of the internal borders, assumed to be an inevitable consequence of the Single European Act. The first response was the Schengen Convention, but in the codicils to the treaty of Maastricht there was also a paper on the use of information technology to counter these problems. From this latter grew a series of databases, initially conceived as a way of facilitating police cooperation by abolishing jurisdictional borders by the use of cyberspace.
So post-Brexit, the possibility is that the UK becomes an offshore haven for transnational criminal actors, because extradition will be problematic, money-laundering will be easy and cooperation will be one way…The UK will expect cooperation from the rest of Europe in finding and returning its offenders from Europe, while refusing or delaying the extradition and provision of evidence to police and judicial authorities outside its borders. It also becomes attractive to people-smugglers as its stronger border controls will enable them to put their prices up. Criminal networks will change behaviour wherever they see opportunities for extra profits and lower likelihood of prosecution.
Criminal networks have had to change their modus operandi as a result of Covid-19. Fewer flights, ferry movements and movement in general make drug trafficking and people trafficking mire exposed to discovery by the security services. On the other hand, there are new opportunities: black markets in PPE, counterfeit medicines, snake oil salespersons, and fraudulent health products are obvious opportunities. So are personnel shortages in health services. Illicit drugs have already been discovered in consignments of PPE. The movement to commit crime via the internet will be further enhanced. Intelligence about the changing nature of criminality was always important, but the pace of change is on the increase. When Romanians are sent to Ireland to open bank accounts into which victims make payments for the purchase of non-existent goods, it is likely that they are doing the same in other countries and investigators need to know this as a matter of urgency.
Nonetheless, there is confidence on the UK side that there will be cooperation under the banner of Mutual Legal Aid agreements that will lead to the arrest and prosecution of criminals, but such confidence appears to underestimate the nature and complexity of cross-border criminal networks as well as their changing modus operandi. UK investigators and politicians, however favour disruption over prosecution, arguing that prosecution takes too long and that juries tend not to understand complex cases and therefore acquit. This may reflect a flaw in the adversarial system, however and further enhance the possibility of the UK becoming the refuge of choice for both criminal money and illicit venture capitalists.
If there is lack of reciprocity, there is a likelihood that Continental investigators will give UK requests for assistance a low priority. Requests via Interpol for information are unlikely to run as smoothly as European Arrest Warrants and European Information Orders unless there is to be significant UK investment in technology and personnel into Interpol. The Swedish Decision, for example, lays down an 8 hour turnaround time for urgent requests for intelligence and/or information, tapering to one week or even two in less urgent cases.
The present author, when fortunate enough to be invited to act as the UK “expert” on a project investigating the possibility of a single database in the EU for prosecutions of criminal offences, interviewed two members of the then NCIS . When asked what would be the top of a UK investigators’ shopping list, the answer was “data-sharing”. In other words a legal basis for sharing data between investigators in different countries. The Prüm Decision and, to an extent, the Swedish Decision, provided for this, but UK politicians are uncomfortable with it, partly because of supervision by the ECJ, but partly because though they might be happy to look at data from EU countries, they are much less happy to have investigators from those counties accessing UK data. The EU itself is, of course, very suspicious of UK data protection law and procedures. That the Home Office failed to admit the wrongful storage of data from EU databases and its sharing of such data with the US and probably the rest of the “Five Eyes” has strengthened this suspicion and made access to the Schengen database in particular unlikely after Brexit.
The Schengen Database enables border control cooperation, law enforcement cooperation and vehicle registration cooperation. At the end of 2017 it had 76 million records, it was accessed 5.2 billion times and recorded 243,818 hits ie searches that created an alert and the appropriate authorities agreed. In March 2018, exchange of fingerprint data was enabled. At the end of 2021 it will also be capable of sharing of biometric information, for example on missing persons, alerts on vulnerable persons, information on persons suspected of involvement in terrorism-related activities, bans on entry and other aspects of illegal immigration, plus extend alerts on other criminal activities. It will also provide enhanced access for other EU agencies. Exclusion from the database will increase response time for UK requests for intelligence and access to alerts on individuals.
The UK is already excluded from access to the Schengen information System for immigration alerts as it is not a member of Schengen. There are also databases run by Europol, along with the system of Joint Investigative Teams. The UK is likely to be able to negotiate access to SIENA, the Secure Information Network Exchange Application, as the USA and Australia have already successfully negotiated such access. It has nowhere near the capabilities of the Schengen Information System but is extending its activities. It should be possible for the UK to participate in joint investigative Teams as third countries may be invited to join a particular case, but, of course, subject to judicial supervision under the law of the lead country. It is unlikely that the UK would be allowed to lead a Joint Investigative Team, but the final agreement has not yet been negotiated. There is still an assumption that somehow the UK is superior in investigative skills, but as already noted, its record on fraud and financial investigations is not seen that way by the rest of the European Union.
It should not be forgotten that there are plusses for the EU in the departure of the UK from the JHA system. For example, will remove the last major obstacle to the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor, with the power to supervise cross-border investigation within the EU and bring prosecutions in appropriate national courts. Working alongside Eurojust, such an office should be able to tackle the problems of preserving the chain of evidence across judicial boundaries, identifying jurisdictional problems and further the process of creating European Criminal Law, perhaps even the Corpus Juris already proposed for prosecuting fraud against the European Budget, but more likely through a series of framework agreements and directives such as the Anti-Money Laundering Directives.
If there is one certainty, it is that police officers will always find a way to work together and that politicians will have to legislate to legalise their operation if it leads to successful interdictions of criminal networks. A Dutch Chief constable told me back in the 1980s that Schengen became necessary when Dutch cranial investigators were found to be operating south of Paris in pursuit of a drug trafficking operation. Information and intelligence will always be exchanged informally. The problem is turning such exchanges into evidence that can be used in Court, which is why justice and Home Affairs policy exists.
A reflection and a warning – Universal Support
Universal Support.
Christos Kotsogiannis, Professor of Economics, University of Exeter, and Director of the Tax Administration Research Centre (TARC).
March 26, 2020
Who would expect this three months ago? Certainly, we did not even know that such virus existed! Now the world is facing an ‘invisible enemy’ which has (putting the health crisis and the immediate need to respond to this aside!) disrupted economies and society on the scale that most of us have never witnessed, seeking ways to fight against it. Many countries have taken extraordinary fiscal and monetary policy measures, announcing a plethora of unprecedented fiscal stimulus packages to smooth out consumers’ income and stimulate demand and limit the human and economic impact of COVID-19.
Already significant global production has been lost, and the forecasts for growth are being continuously revised, downwards, as events further develop.No matter how optimistic one is, the current pandemic crisis will inevitably lead to a deep economic crisis with long lasting impact (than the economic crisis of 2008). The sheer magnitude of the pandemic shock makes forecasting incredibly complex. The extent of the lost production will of course depend on how severe and persistent the pandemic is, as well as the measures countries adopt individually and collectively. Stimulating demand, as desirable as it is, will not be enough as the global supply chain is also disrupted (even if consumers’ purchasing power does not change, demand cannot be fulfilled if the global supply side is severely affected by the necessary lockdown).
A crisis of this magnitude requires bold actions. A combination of direct transfers to consumers and support (direct and indirect including deferral of payment of tax liabilities) to businesses is likely to be an effective policy – but getting the mix right for the latter is challenging and will depend on administrative capacity. Delivering brand new administrative systems to administer complex policies is hard, as is to set income and profits thresholds for which assistance policies may depend upon. How much and how quickly resources can get to households and business is therefore a pressing issue. If financial support is difficult to deliver in a timely fashion universal support is the right instrument, even though some ‘non-deserving’ businesses might benefit from them too.
The pandemic is affecting supply, and productivity, of the economy and as such will make business investment more costly. A change also in the way we do things is required. Social-distancing and lockdown policies mean working from home, for those sectors that can. But working from home has its own limitations, and adjusting to this is not only challenging but takes also considerable time. If aggressive demand-boosting policies are not adopted, the incentive of business to invest will be reduced further fuelling a loss in productivity which in turn will fuel even less demand. If not acting decisively, there is a danger that economies will find themselves locked in a ‘low-economic-growth-trap’.
Importantly, to win the ‘war’ against the ‘invisible enemy’ global coordination is needed, as the pandemic is affecting the global economic network. Though there are good signs of this happening already, more needs to be done. We live in unprecedented times, but this is the time where the global community should realise that it is better to coordinate than to compete. This, inevitably might help the global community in solving another big challenge it faces, for example, climate change. When normality resumes, the pandemic experience should make climate change coordination easier to achieve. While the 2008 crisis was more of a crisis of institutions the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is not. Importantly, the ‘shock’ is symmetric and affects all countries. But how successfully a country deals with the pandemic will depend upon how quickly the institutions have been mobilised. This realisation, and the successful conclusion of the pandemic, can act as a ‘coordination device’ where we consumers, producers, states and international organizations coordinate on a good equilibrium following the social norms consistent with the common good. This might take time but there is hope that for a much better world after we get through this.
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