Digital Surveillance of Citizens Deployed in COVID-19 Fight, Rules Send Genie Back to the Bottle
martyb writes:
Pervasive surveillance through digital technologies is the business model of Facebook and Google. And now governments are considering the web giants' tools to track COVID-19 carriers for the public good.
Among democracies, Israel appears to have gone first: prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced "emergency regulations that will enable the use of digital means in the war on Corona. These means will greatly assist us in locating patients and thereby stop the spread of the virus."
[...] The idea of using tech to spy on COVID-carriers may now be catching.
The Washington Post has reported that the White House has held talks with Google and Facebook about how the data they hold could contribute to analysis of the virus' spread. Both companies already share some anonymised location [data] with researchers. The Post suggested anonymised location data be used by government agencies to understand how people are behaving.
Thailand recently added a COVID-19-screening form to the Airports of Thailand app. While the feature is a digital replica of a paper registration form offered to incoming travellers, the app asks for location permission and tries to turn on Bluetooth every time it is activated. The Register has asked the app's developers to explain the permissions it seeks, but has not received a reply in 48 hours.
[...] If other nations follow suit, will it be possible to put the genie back in?
Probably not: plenty of us give away our location data to exercise-tracking apps for the sheer fun of it and government agencies gleefully hoover up what they call "open source intelligence". (R)
After the 9/11 attacks, laws were enacted in the United States that have since resisted being scaled back. Think, for example, of the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001).
There were sunset provisions to the act which, failing reauthorization, would cause provisions to expire on December 31, 2005. In the years since, most of the provisions have been extended. Most recently we have the USA FREEDOM Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015). Among its provisions was the extension of the USA PATRIOT Act.
"KTO NIE PAMIaTA HISTORII SKAZANY JEST NA JEJ PONOWNE PRZEAYCIE" GEORGE SANTAYANA ("THE ONE WHO DOES NOT REMEMBER HISTORY IS BOUND TO LIVE THROUGH IT AGAIN" / GEORGE SANTAYANA) from a plaque at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Polish and translated into English. Wikipedia link.
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