WASHINGTON—A new survey finds widespread public support for aggressive measures like government cellphone tracking and mandatory health screenings in public places to curb the spread of coronavirus, which has infected more than 180,000 Americans.
The new results from Harris Poll show that support for such policies—even when they might affect privacy and civil liberties—crosses a spectrum of demographic and ideological lines, suggesting that policy makers have significant latitude from the public in crafting emergency responses to combat the virus.
The Harris survey, which was conducted online between March 28-30, reveals that 60% of adults back giving government officials access to anonymized cellphone location data to establish whether Americans are complying with social-distancing instructions.
The poll also finds that 71% of Americans would be willing to share their own mobile location data with authorities to receive alerts about their potential exposure to the virus—for example, if they were near a suspected or known coronavirus carrier.
In addition, 65% support a public registry that would show if their neighbors were diagnosed with the virus and 84% are in favor of mandatory health screenings to enter public places like beaches and airports. Another 77% back a mandate that businesses hosting events like concerts or conferences conduct health screenings.
Support for such measures broadly crosses partisan lines. Sixty-one percent of self-identified Republicans and 64% of Democrats are in favor of giving officials anonymized location data.
The support also largely cuts across generational lines, though older Americans are marginally more concerned about privacy than younger ones. For example, 69% of respondents aged 18 to 34 approve of a public database of people diagnosed with coronavirus, while 59% of those over 65 do.
The poll, which surveyed about 2,000 Americans, doesn’t provide a traditional margin of error because of its online methodology and weighting. A traditional poll of that sample size would carry a margin of error of between 2% and 3% in either direction.
“I looked at this data and thought a little bit about this being a modern day Patriot Act—a dramatic move really quick in reaction to 9/11. I think that’s kind of what you’re seeing in the public—a lot of bipartisan support for some pretty aggressive moves by the government to curb the spread of coronavirus,” said John Gerzema, the chief executive of the Harris Poll.
The Patriot Act passed Congress overwhelmingly in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, granting the government additional powers to combat terrorism.
The law has been controversial since its inception and some of its provisions were modified after intelligence-community contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of several secret surveillance programs.
Governments world-wide have turned to policies that many consider invasive and sometimes draconian to slow the spread of coronavirus, which has threatened to overwhelm their health-care systems. China sealed off Wuhan, a city of 11 million people where the virus emerged, and put in place aggressive quarantines that kept as many as 500 million in their homes at various points.
China also used cellphone data and apps to track and limit the movement of its citizens, and instituted temperature checkpoints, monitoring citizens in public spaces for potential fever.
Though China’s policies were criticized at the time by some human-rights and privacy activists, many Western countries eventually adopted similar travel restrictions and location-tracking measures. Cellphone carriers in Europe and Israel have provided huge troves of data to national authorities, while governments all over the world have instituted stay-at-home, shelter-in-place or lockdown orders of varying severity.
In the U.S., many cities and states are currently on lockdown, with governments asking or ordering their residents to limit nonessential travel.
In addition, The Wall Street Journal reported last week that federal, state and local government officials had started to receive reports based on the anonymized movement of millions of cellphones to help evaluate how many Americans are complying with social-distancing orders and to see where crowds might still be gathering.
In the U.S., personal health-care information is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA. A government registry of known coronavirus patients that included personal information like names and addresses would be contrary to those privacy protections.
Cellphone data from carriers is also protected by law, though there are some exceptions. The data currently being used by federal, state and local governments is drawn from the mobile advertising industry, which relies on consumers to opt in to tracking. Because of that, the industry is largely unregulated and often makes bulk location data available for purchase.
The Supreme Court has put more stringent restrictions on the government’s acquisition of mobile-phone data from cellphone carriers, requiring a search warrant to obtain such data on any individual in most circumstances.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com