Coronavirus Surveillance Helps, But the Programs Are Hard to Stop
Will measures enacted during the pandemic be dismantled when they’re no longer needed?
A demonstration of facial-recognition technology at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, in August 2019.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
An Israeli tech company that specializes in counterterrorism spyware is working with a dozen countries to slow the spread of an invisible enemy known as Covid-19. In China, authorities have deployed facial-recognition software and location tracking in their fight against the coronavirus. And a U.S. big data company with connections to intelligence agencies is talking to governments about how it can help.
It’s not surprising that algorithms and artificial intelligence have been recruited to fight a pandemic threatening millions of lives. Yet around the world, surveillance measures normally used against terrorists and criminals are raising privacy and civil liberties concerns, causing governments from Seoul to Jerusalem to recalibrate their tactics. Some also have had to assure their citizens that the monitoring is only temporary.