Rising state surveillance to fight coronavirus could turn health crisis into human rights disaster, say experts
The massive outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has not only given rise to serious health and economic challenges but also the prospect of a surveillance state. Several rights groups have warned that governments and corporations have teamed up to make use of data and increase surveillance, putting freedom and privacy in jeopardy.
Reuters came up with a report last week that more than 100 rights groups have warned governments against overusing digital surveillance that has been rolled out to check coronavirus spread and cite the crisis as a cover for breaching privacy.
Over 1.4M people have been affected by coronavirus the world over while more than 82,000 have died. In the US, nearly 400,000 have been hit while almost 13,000 lives have been lost.
Governments across the world have put into use measures such as facial recognition and phone tracking to trace the outbreak of infections and keep a check on people as they enforce lockdowns, quarantines and curfews.
State digital surveillance threatens privacy
In a statement, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Privacy International said these measures could prove to be counter-productive without proper safeguards in place and end up harming people’s rights. "An increase in state digital surveillance powers, such as obtaining access to mobile phone location data, threatens privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association," a statement said.
The human rights groups also said that all the personal data that has been collected should be stored safely and not used for commercial or other purposes besides fighting the ongoing health crisis.
Governments have enforced lockdowns, travel bans and closed borders in the wake of the disease that reportedly originated in China's Wuhan city towards the end of 2019.
Peter Micek, general counsel at Access Now digital rights group said in a statement: "Governments risk compounding the harms of this outbreak by running roughshod over our privacy and dignity."
Reuters cited HRW and said some 24 nations were making use of telecommunications for tracking locations while 14 were tracing contact or enforcing quarantine through applications.
China, for instance, introduced a traffic-light system that uses smartphone software to categorize individuals as red, yellow or green to determine whether they can move about. Countries like Israel and Singapore are also using technology to track people who are exposed to those infected.
Rasha Abdul Rahim, deputy director of Amnesty International’s tech division, said the world must not sleepwalk into a permanently expanded surveillance state. She said it has been seen in the recent past that governments are reluctant to give up their temporary surveillance power.
According to one report in Zero Hedge, the wars on terror, drug, illegal immigration and now against COVID-19 started with legitimate responses but then the governments used them to increase their surveillance to curb the citizens’ freedom.
The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to privacy also warned some countries recently against turning authoritarian if new emergency powers were not kept under check. "There will be an aftermath to the COVID-19 outbreak. We must ensure that the measures governments are taking right now do not transform this health crisis into a global human rights crisis," Reuters cited Access Now senior policy analyst Estelle Masse as saying.
Former CIA operator and whistleblower Edward Snowden also warned against the tendency to breach people’s privacy through the temporary anti-pandemic surveillance measures. In an interview with the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in March, Snowden said: "When we see emergency measures passed, particularly today, they tend to be sticky." He warned that the temporary mass surveillance which has been put to use for combating the pandemic, will not be so temporary in the times to come and the new measures will become the new normal.