How the coronavirus is driving new surveillance programs globally

https://onezero.medium.com/the-pandemic-is-a-trojan-horse-for-surveillance-programs-around-the-world-887fa6f12ec9

by walterbell • 6 years ago

254 64 6 years ago

onezero.medium.com

saagarjha• 6 years ago

Governments need information to create containment strategies and know where to focus resources. At the same time, governments have a way of holding onto tools that undermine citizens’ privacy long after the moment of crisis has passed.

I wonder if it’s worth governments’ time trying to come up with automatically expiring bills for “emergency” uses such as these.

lkramer• 6 years ago

In Denmark, most (all?) of the emergency measures have come with a sunset clause, typically a year from inception.

a_imho• 6 years ago

Why a year? Emergency measures being valid for the duration of the emergency would be pretty straightforward.

Tainnor6• 6 years ago

I would also assume that the GDPR would impose severe restrictions as to the allowed duration of data collection for contact tracing purposes (in the sense that it shouldn't be legal anymore once Coronavirus ceases to be a major threat), but IANAL, so I could be wrong.

m4rtink• 6 years ago

That's quite a long time - the state of emergency here in Cze Republic can be only 30 days, after which the parliament needs to confirm any extension. Which it already did & for less than the extra month originally requested by the government.

netcan• 6 years ago

That's a good thing, but lingering emergency laws are not the full extent of the risk.

The risk is largely related to changing perceptions and standards for what is normal, beyond the pales & such. Once something has been done widely and publicly, it becomes more normal and less scary.

alacombe• 6 years ago

In Canada, the Government tried to pass broad emergencies measures giving it essentially unlimited power without parliament oversight... until December 2022.

shakna2• 6 years ago

I wonder if it’s worth governments’ time trying to come up with automatically expiring bills for “emergency” uses such as these.

The Patriot Act has a sunset clause, but has been repeatedly extended, which no obvious sign of it ever not being extended.

The ability to change laws makes it easier for government's to sell these sorts of changes to their constituents ("it's only temporary") whilst knowing that it probably won't turn out to actually be temporary, because they can change something that is temporary into effectively permanent.

wtdo• 6 years ago

That can be fixed by making sunset clauses automatically require a few things:

1. Must be voted on alone. That is, no sneaking it into another bill, or into the budget votes.

2. Each renewal requires a higher percentage of yes votes than the last time until 100% is required. To my recollection, there's never been a time when the Patriot Act received 100% approval.

malandrew• 6 years ago

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program” – Milton Friedman

crocodiletears3• 6 years ago

Sunset clauses aren't reliable mechanisms (patriot act). Beyond special interests, I wouldn't blame legislators if they were a little afraid to deny an intelligence service some of their toys if they've gotten comfortable using them.

hutzlibu4• 6 years ago

But that is up to the people to pressure for change. As long as most fear the ever dreadful terrorist and as long as the ever going war on terror creates new terrorist, there is an everlasting accepted need for the patriot act.

And here with the new surveilance against corona, we will probably find out, that to fight new more dangerous deseases and of course terrorism, crime and pedophiles, we cannot really give up on these tools. There is no alternative, like my chancellor merkel says with everything. And when enough people believe it, it is true.

rsync• 6 years ago

"Sunset clauses aren't reliable mechanisms (patriot act)."

I don't know how often sunset clauses are used in (US) federal legislation, but I do recall that the original "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994[1] had, and eventually utilized, a sunset clause. The law did, in fact, expire in its entirety in 2004.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban

lukeplato2• 6 years ago

Although it's still considered a fringe/conspiracy theory, I've heard some interesting claims on the use of digital ids and immunity certificates for verifying who has been vaccinated.

- https://id2020.org/

- https://youtu.be/-aR7cz30chE?t=145

triyambakam3• 6 years ago

It's not a theory, recently Bill Gates did an AMA on Reddit [1] and verified that ID2020 would indeed be used to verify who has been vaccinated. The conspiracy theory aspect is whatever one wants to expound on from there...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/comment...

krapp2• 6 years ago

The conspiracy theory aspect is whatever one wants to expound on from there...

Let me guess... Mark of the Beast, rise of the Antichrist, New World Order, FEMA death camps, blah blah blah. Same stuff, different decade.

lukeplato2• 6 years ago

IMO, it doesn't seem appropriate to set up a global identification system by leveraging the crisis, but I don't know what the alternatives would look like.

kiba• 6 years ago

We already have driver licenses. It wouldn't be too difficult to expand to driver license plus immunity card.

wolco2• 6 years ago

Bill Gates strikes me as someone who will be a villian to society as he ages. Bill Gates lacks the empathy necessary to design solutions with people in mind. The threat comes from the power he unleshes through his charity foundation.

Things like ID2020 will be expanded. The forced vaccination program through excluding participation in society hasn't started yet. Chances are your kid will not be allowed in school without one at some point.

CoronaBasedGod• 6 years ago

These protests we are seeing would be significantly more powerful if they didn't mention politics. Instead people are quick to say "it's just the other political party and those people are stupid".

Tainnor6• 6 years ago

I think the article should more clearly distinguish between approaches that indeed gather lots of unnecessary data (that is often of questionable importance) vs. more decentralised (e.g. bluetooth based) approaches that can help with contact tracing while still allowing to be implemented with privacy concerns in mind.

Also, (as a non-American) I think the patriot act is a horrible thing, but I also think that in particular, the threat of terrorism has always been massively overstated (and even if not, many of the subsequent changes e.g. in airport security, are terribly ineffective). By contrast, I think that Coronavirus is a very serious threat and a recent study does seem to indicate that app-based contact tracing solutions could really help. I'll repeat that it's possible to do this in a privacy-conscious manner and it really should be done like that (not just because otherwise people will refuse to use it).

DennisP2• 6 years ago

In the U.S., the Supreme Court decided[1] in 2018 that the government couldn't access cell location data without a warrant. However, they made an exception for public safety:

Such exigencies include the need to pursue a fleeing suspect, protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm or prevent the imminent destruction of evidence.

Fighting a pandemic arguably falls into this category, since an awful lot of people are threatened with imminent harm. So we already have a constitutional standard for rolling back pandemic-related surveillance measures.

Also, something this article overlooks about the Apple/Google system is that it does a pretty good job of protecting user privacy. Contacts are discovered by direct bluetooth contact, and central servers don't get any information from people except that they tested positive.[2][3]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court...

[2] https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/

[3] https://github.com/DP-3T/documents

II2II• 6 years ago

Privacy discussions often gloss over or outright ignore the many factors that affect perspectives on privacy. Quite often this will make a stance that is perfectly reasonable to one person look like raving lunatic to another person.

Trust is one factor. Even if an individual agreed that the approach being suggested by Apple and Google is a good one, they are unlikely support it if they do not trust those businesses. Even if that individual trusts the motivations of a party, it does not imply that they trust their competence.

Social change is another factor. Whether we acknowledge it or not, there has been an enormous change in attitudes towards privacy over the past quarter century. If you took anyone from 1995 and showed them the technology of today, they would likely be amazed by our access to information and horrified by other people's access to our own information. Keep in mind that was an era when the Internet was just starting to reach into homes and the typical phone call was made from a landline. On top of that, most devices were siloed by necessity so that phone call was between you, the recipient, and the phone company. You did not have to worry about a social media company trying to mine your contact data with an app installed on your phone (because phones did not support apps and barely supported storing phone numbers). Even though we have had decades to adapt to those changes, some people are more likely to embrace their benefits while others have held on to their old values.

zadler• 6 years ago

Regarding privacy, is there something in particular blocking then from receiving identifying information from people? Because it seems like this wouldn’t be difficult to add in at such a time as the climate is right to do so, and to be frank I’m not sure that they deserve the benefit of the doubt at this point.

DennisP2• 6 years ago

Since they control the OS, I guess there's nothing in particular blocking them from uploading your location and identifying information at all times regardless. But this specific proposed system just uploads a set of random numbers when someone tests positive.

hanniabu• 6 years ago

Assuming we never find a viable vaccine, then this would also arguably allow them to continue the tracking for containment/mitigation.

at_a_remove• 6 years ago

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

m-p-3• 6 years ago

I think the part that worries me the most for privacy and how far-reaching it could be is this

https://coronavirus.medium.com/apple-and-google-join-forces-...

I know Apple is marketing themselves as pro-pricacy, but I doubt they can anonymize the data in a way that preserves privacy while still achieving the goal of tracing contacts.

It just seems like a convoluted way of making a gigantic knowledge graph of interactions between individuals under the pretense of public health.

How the coronavirus is driving new surveillance programs globally

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