All good things must come to an end and the time has come for me to move on from The Correspondent. Don’t worry, this newsletter will be left in capable hands, with De Correspondent’s stellar Surveillance and Technology correspondent Dimitri Tokmetzis writing to you every other week.
When I first started working on The Correspondent’s Track(ed) Together project back in March, China was trying to combat the coronavirus by using personal data belonging to its tech-savvy population. How much its health code apps were responsible for reducing the spread of the virus back then remains unclear. But the country’s success at “flattening the curve” means one of the main preoccupations of governments everywhere has been, “How can we use tech to beat this virus?”
One of our aims of Track(ed) Together was to interrogate whether these tech fixes worked or were just a distraction. But the project wouldn’t have been possible without our global team of collaborators who sent us updates on the digital response to the virus in their country. Some of them contributed to our postcard series, tackling themes such as data cultures, permanence and resistance from countries such as Peru, Russia and South Africa. Others helped us build a database that so far includes 500 surveillance measures introduced in response to Covid-19. That database also helped Dimitri and I write features and explainers that dug deep into the politics orbiting pandemic tech.
As each of us navigated our own country’s lockdown restrictions, we watched as governments worldwide authorised the use of telecoms data in order to understand how much people were moving around despite lockdown restrictions and to predict where future outbreaks would travel. We also saw a global wave of smartphone apps and websites that asked their users how they were feeling in another effort to predict outbreaks early. Questions such as: "Do you have a cough? A temperature?" meant aggregated answers could be crunched to map potential virus hotspots.
Then there was the global shift towards contact-tracing apps, particularly those using Bluetooth to register encounters. It feels like we’ve been talking about contact-tracing tech for months, but it’s only this summer the apps have really gathered steam as they are rapidly introduced by governments on a national and regional level – especially in US states – as well as by some companies and even universities.
Quarantine apps have been more divisive. But despite their privacy concerns, countries including Poland, Ukraine and Bahrain have seen the appeal in being able to enforce quarantine restrictions by tracking people’s location and asking them to verify they’re still home by sending selfies.
A lot of countries and companies have also been experimenting with tech to enforce mask-wearing or social distancing. Already we’ve seen drones in Rwanda, robots in Tunisia and AI-equipped CCTV in France all capable of alerting police if people are found to be flouting the rules.
So, what next? The rhetoric six months ago was all about “fighting” corona. Now, the tone is more conciliatory – how do we live with the virus? For tech, the next major challenge will be inter-operable apps and data sharing. The European Union and the African Union are both pushing for systems that will work across borders. For states that insisted on doing things their own way – such as France – that is going to cause political challenges because their contact-tracing app might not work in tandem with its neighbours’.
The promise of “Immunity passports” – that distinguish between people who have recently been tested or vaccinated and those who haven’t – is also likely to become relevant again as countries try to reopen with the virus still present. Trials in Estonia and Chile have already taken place while Malaysia and Colombia have started using apps that assign users green (low risk) or red (high risk) QR codes based on how they answer questions about their health. There’s a possibility these rudimentary health codes could evolve to integrate test results at a later date.
If China provides a glimpse of what’s ahead, then the country is demonstrating another huge challenge for the future – the appeal for authorities to turn temporary Covid-19 tech into a more permanent feature. Shanghai has started using its coronavirus “health code” as a form of digital identity, while Suzhou – another city in the east – recently suggested transforming its health code into a “civility code” that could deduct points if people were found to be jay-walking or drunk-driving.
So, how can we make sure Covid-19 tech stays temporary and proportionate? My final article for the Track(ed) Together series explores what we should expect from Data Protection Authorities during this current crisis and why they’re not delivering. In many countries, they remain under-funded with governments ignoring any guidance they do put out. Yet empowering these watchdogs is the best way to make sure government institutions and corporate bodies use our data in a way that’s proportionate. You can read the article when it comes out this Thursday 1 October.
WEEKLY WEB ROUNDUP
Thanks to The Correspondent’s conversation editor, Nabeelah, for bringing Ghufran Salih – and her mission to make data privacy more accessible – into my life. Never expected to see countries ranked according to their data privacy laws on Tik Tok? Think again.
THANKS FOR READING!