patterns of social engineering (not only masks...)

Social engineering (WpE), in "Applied"Social Sciences, is multidmensional concept see Disambiguation pages in Wikipedia. Here used as an attempt of institutions to change the culture, in the sense of the social behaviour of the cultural agents. This article will demonstrate dimensions of social engineering related to three aspects:

1. individual behavior, especially wearing masks
   
2. the new corona warn app
3. some findings on testing and vaccination    

1.Although the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, the numbers are showing clearly distinct cultural patterns: this was discussed briefly in a post before and more in depth analysis about France, Germany and Japan can be seen here (showing presentations from June 18., organized by the Maison Franco-Japanese and Deutsches Institut fuer Japanstudien, both in Tokyo). Discussing the previous post in my seminar, I learned that the wearing of face masks is in Japan introduced in school during the delivery of the school lunch meals, by the students. To prevent the spread of influenza germs the elementary school students are trained to wash their hand thoroughly and wear masks. This influenza protection hygiene in Japan seems to be one (cultural) factor very important for the relatively low death rate of Covid-19 in Japan.   

2.Corona Tracing Apps are one another important aspect, closely related to social engineering in the 21st century. But in this context an explicit definition of "social engineering" is needed, because searching (on Google) the terms "social engineering corona apps" is showing some interesting results: "What COVID-19 teaches us about social engineering?" (Blog "Dark reading"), but here "social engineering" is meant in the sense of information security, while this post is covering "social engineering" as a concept in the social sciences, which talks about possibility to change the social behaviours of people (= the culture) through technical measures. But is the Coronoa tracing app really social engineering? i.e. Is the Corona tracing app designed to change the behaviour of persons? The answer can only be: It depends on the app! There are various Covid-19 apps (Wp) around. Some countries are using the Covid-19 pandemic to expand mass surveillance (Guardian) on their own population. The Norway example (tech-crunch) shows that in this country the warnings of Data protection Agency is this country is taken seriously. And other Apps are specially designed not to be violate the privacy of its users. The swiss developted app (BBC, see also, in German, Spiegel online and the NZZ about the app-development) designed in cooperation with Apple and Google is built to avoid data-storage at a central place. The App can therefore only used to inform about the possibility of a Covid-19 infection. In the case of this app, the level of social engineering is deliberately low. The app called COCOA (see Mainichi-article 28/6/2020) in Japan (The Verge, 19/6/2020) developed in cooperation with Microsoft follows the same principles. Not all countries developed an own app in the UK (Guardian) the Google and Apple will be used directly. But in countries, where the decentral Bluetooth-approach is applied the social engineering aspect of the apps is (in the moment) very small, the users only have to install the new app, but they do not have to change their behaviour in other ways.

3. Testing and vaccination is not all aspects linked to individual behaviour. Only when a person decides to go to doctor and get a vaccination (e.g. against Influenza), this would be a relation to individual behaviour. But epidemic outbreaks shape social behaviour, as one can see in Covid-19 pandemic, therefore the prevention of pandemics also has great influences. And the prevention of pandemics was after the 19 century: vaccination. Vaccination policies (Wp) were rolled out to prevent epidemics and create immunity in the population ("herd immunity"). But mandatory vaccination has also be a controversial issue, as the history of anti-vaccination shows. (History of vaccines, Blog). In a lot of countries the population does not trust their governments, because of the history of oppression and it not surprising that the trust of population to their governments is in some african countries very low.  (Médecins Sans Frontières = MSF, see also the Interview of Karline Kleijer of MSF in Spiegel online, in German).