The latest analysis for America Unfiltered, the joint project of EA WorldView and University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute:
See also “What is America Unfiltered?“
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The Coronavirus pandemic is the story of our time. Incessant flows of news about the impact of the disease on our society are producing an information disorder, or “infodemic” as described by UN Secretary General Antonio António Guterres.
Alongside the fight against misinformation, there is another concern: COVID-19 has not only provoked an epidemiological disruption, but also a technological one due to the advancement of means of surveillance for societal control.
Monitoring an infected population is a measure used by states to safeguard the public health of their citizens. Characterized by calling patients several times to check their health status, it is becoming increasingly technological today to accelerate the tracking process. China has been a pioneer in the field since the early days of the pandemic, when the government proceeded with extensive surveillance measures to track citizens’ mobile phones.
After observing the success of the Chinese model, other Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan have emulated it with strategies to “flatten the curve” and reopen economies and societies. Western democracies have now joined the fray, launching their own systems to gather the location of those affected, to obtain health data to track the spread of the disease, and to move societies away from lockdowns.
But anxiety about such surveillance techniques is rising in the West. Julie Cohen argues that, contrary to authoritarian regimes, democracies are meant to take care with “surveillance for reasons more closely connected to its purported efficiency”. But that has not prevented privacy issues arising from collection of sensitive information.
