Mass Monitoring Can't Become The Norm

Contact tracing may be needed during the Covid crisis; but, steps must be taken to stop it from morphing into mass surveillance

- Sanchit Vir Gogia

The past 60 days have been a whirlwind for most governments. From treating coronavirus as just another flu, they have had to course correct and give the pandemic its due attention and focus. While South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore were swift in their handling of the pandemic, others like the US, the UK, and Italy were struggling to form a concerted opinion. And this has cost them dearly in the form of a high number of infected cases. The US is worst hit and contributes over 30 per cent to over two million cases of coronavirus worldwide.

In addition to social distancing, mass testing, and complete isolation, governments are turning to technology. While China’s use of technology to tackle COVID-19 sets an example of sorts, it also brings out the limitation other countries have, ie mandating citizens to use apps that capture personal data.

The collection of personal data by the government is a sensitive topic, and often seen as an attempt to turn the country into a nanny state. In countries like the UK and India, citizens are growing wary of sharing their data. For instance, Zoom’s privacy flaws are being frowned upon by regulators in the US and EU. In fact, in India, the Ministry of Home Affairs has banned government officials from using it. Any government-owned contact tracing apps (read as mass monitoring systems) cannot be exempt from similar treatment to ensure authorities don’t use such a system for mass surveillance during and (especially) post the pandemic.

Monitoring framework

The case for governments using a mass monitoring system has been made stronger by the coming together of Apple and Google. Both giants are working together on a common framework that will allow developers to build contact tracing apps per directives by local authorities.