Since the start of the pandemic, big tech has been kept under scrutiny. We’ve heard a lot about Apple’s and Google’s involvement in contact tracing, Amazon’s delivery of Covid-19 tests and the reliance on Microsoft Teams from remote offices and schools.
But as I was following the surveillance measures introduced in response to the coronavirus, I started to feel a disconnect. Everyone kept talking about big tech despite a splurge of reports detailing how another kind of company was also sharing huge amounts of user data with governments.
Telecommunication companies, AKA telcos, are the firms that enable your laptop to get wifi or your phone to connect to signal or 4G. They are also able to collect huge amounts of personal data about their users, information ranging from who they call to what their text messages say and the locations they visit.
Since the start of this pandemic, governments from Australia to Austria have been requesting aggregated location data from local telcos to assess whether people are complying with lockdown orders and also to predict how the virus might spread. Other countries have been using less anonymised forms of this data to carry out contact tracing (in Israel) and also to alert police to group gatherings (in Switzerland).
Why then has their role in the coronavirus earned less interest than big tech’s? Perhaps because these firms have long shared data with law enforcement (think the NSA-Snowden leaks) – we’re used to it. But maybe also because we’ve been distracted by the more famous (more meme-friendly) CEOs of Facebook or Amazon: Mark Zuckerberg makes a much better villain than Nick Read, the Vodafone Group CEO, who few people outside the industry have heard of.
Companies like Vodafone or AT&T have not developed brands that are nearly as resonant as Facebook or Apple. That makes telcos less accountable, despite the huge amounts of data they process.
That’s why, for my latest article, I decided to dig deep into the history of telcos and track their compliance with government requests over time – through a wave of privatisations in the 1990s, the Snowden leaks, and their response to the recent increase in internet shutdown orders – to find out how these companies came to be so cosy with official agencies. By understanding how those companies operated in the past, perhaps we can learn how to guard against misuse of our data in the future – especially with no end in sight to this pandemic.
Don’t forget to let me know what you think in the comments.
COVID-19 TECH BEYOND BORDERS
By now we’ve seen a flurry of national contact-tracing apps. The Track(ed) Together database so far includes 58 contact-tracing apps that have been launched around the world. But now we are beginning to track a new kind of app. Some have argued the pandemic could be a death knell for globalisation, but if we still want to live in a globally connected world, any apps we come to rely on need to adhere to a system that can be used across borders. Below I’ve listed the very early signs of international coronavirus tracking systems about which details are starting to leak out.
🇮🇪 An Irish company called NearForm is taking advantage of a disunited (United) Kingdom to develop contact-tracing apps for Northern Ireland and now Scotland that could also be compatible with the contact-tracing software already in use in the Republic of Ireland.
🇩🇪 German telcos SAP and Deutsche Telekom are close to a deal with the European commission to develop a software platform that would enable a “roaming” function to be added to Bluetooth contact-tracing apps. That would mean compatible national apps could work across national borders, enabling the resurrection of European tourism.
🌍 According to media outlet The East African, the African Union has also developed PanaBIOS, a digital platform capable of carrying out contact tracing across borders. It’s unclear how exactly the platform works, but apparently it is already being used in Ghana.
WEEKLY WEB ROUNDUP
On Twitter, Ed Conway, economics editor at Sky News, compares how little data the UK publishes about Covid-19 cases compared to countries like South Korea or Hong Kong. Yet as the country sees a series of “local lockdowns” take place – where individual cities face stay-at-home orders while people in other areas can continue meeting friends and family – Conway says more data sharing would warn people these local lockdowns are coming. “Govt URGENTLY needs to improve how it’s communicating/explaining these decisions,” he writes.
People in Switzerland have started campaigning for a referendum to be held on the future of the country’s national contact-tracing app, SwissCovid. According to newspaper Le Temps, campaign supporters want the app banned and are anticipating that, like the mask, the app will eventually become compulsory.
In his final report for the United Nations, David Kaye, special rapporteur for freedom of expression, warned of the dangers posed by the commercial element of the coronavirus tech response. “Many private surveillance companies have histories of problematic support for and engagement in human rights violations, yet some are reportedly already seeking entrance into the Covid-19 surveillance field,” he writes. “Such private actors should be subject to robust and transparent public oversight and should themselves adopt policies consistent with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”
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Every Monday, I share the latest on coronavirus surveillance from our global database of tech experts and journalists.