Containing COVID-19 at the Cost of Surrendering Any Vestiges of Privacy: Is It Worth the Pain?

The rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus has forced governments to adopt extraordinary measures: a number of countries including China, Singapore, and South Korea have stepped up surveillance to track those infected with the disease. The systems which allow one to monitor the movement of people through their smartphones, has already been implemented in 11 countries. However, increased surveillance has immediately raised the issue of a potential abuse of people’s privacy by governments and hackers. Asian Mass Surveillance: Better Safe Than Sorry? China was the first one to instrumentalise its street CCTV cameras, drones, facial recognition technology, mobile apps and a whole lot more in order to curb the spread. Dr Binoy Kampmark, a cyber security expert, recollects that the Chinese government call to high-tech companies to develop software to conduct surveillance on those who have contracted COVID-19 and those in contact with the infected has led to several advances that risk being abused. “The systems in term of identifying and monitoring individuals regarding the coronavirus have amplified recently”, says Kampmark. “Megvii, for instance, uses artificial intelligence to measure temperature, employing what it calls the ‘AI temperature measurement system’. Thermal cameras are used to identify suspected suffers with abnormally high… Read full this story

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