The temptation of coronavirus surveillance – By Navneet Alang (The Week – Opinion) / March 28 2020
There is no shortage of things to worry about these days. Alas, you can add another to the list: so-called “covidiots”: a trending tag on Twitter about people, say, gathering on beaches or in bars, ignoring all the warnings, or simply just not practicing social distancing.
It can be infuriating to see people act that way. It’s enough to make one wonder: Can’t we do more than simply shame them? Shouldn’t government start to use the enormous technology apparatus at our disposal to enforce these vital public health policies?
As Sidney Fussel writes in Wired, “the rapid spread of the disease has prompted even some traditional defenders of personal privacy to acknowledge the potential benefits of digital tracking.” The idea is that everything from anonymized smartphone location data to facial recognition systems could be used to track who has the disease, how it is spreading, and to enforce self-quarantine measures. One such privacy advocate, Maciej Cegłowski, is now arguing “the terrifying surveillance infrastructure this project requires exists… Why not use it to save lives?”
Depending on how you feel, that may seem reasonable, or it may sound worrying and draconian. These are unprecedented times, and that means that normally unthinkable things — enforced quarantines, fines for congregating in public places, etc. — are now on the table. But simply expanding the private surveillance industry to the state goes too far. Instead we should focus on established procedures to slow the spread of the virus, and err on the side of individual privacy.
That can seem like a naive view. After all, as more than one report has suggested, if strict measures are not enacted up to 2.2 million Americans could lose their lives to COVID-19. That is a staggering, horrifying figure, and it means we have to do everything we can to contain the spread of the virus before it overwhelms an already fragile health system.
Continue to article: https://theweek.com/articles/904651/temptation-coronavirus-surveillance
