How Will The Pandemic Impact Surveillance Technology

About The Episode

How have emerging technologies been used during the pandemic and how will surveillance tech be used in the future? Has there been an increase in emerging tech use during the pandemic to monitor citizens and what impact has this had?

Transcript

Earlier in 2020 I was amazed by a number of the technologies that were being used to support the fight against the pandemic even when we were still learning about how the virus worked and didn’t have a number of the protocols we do now. In a number of previous podcast episodes I talked about autonomous robots using UV light to disinfect empty hospital rooms, AI systems analyzing lung scans to tell whether someone had covid or not before PCR tests and other testing practices were widely available, and locally 3D printed valves for ventilators during the supply chain disruption issues. These and many more technologies supported healthcare and other essential workers in one of the most chaotic periods society has faced for decades and were praised by many for their contribution to alleviate the workload and stress of employees across the world.

There was also a bit of overreach in certain instances in the early days of the pandemic, most of which occurred in China. I touched on a few of these also in earlier episodes. For instance drones were used to check if people were wearing masks outdoors and would give warnings to people through a microphone. The drones were also used to break up gatherings of people in public spaces. Chinese policemen were also outfitted with helmets that had smart helmets that could detect body temperatures in crowds, hoping to identify infected people. Surveillance cameras were also installed directly in front of some homes in a bid to have people obey the quarantine rules. In certain cases alarms were installed on doors, and in at least one case a camera was installed inside of an apartment. And finally there was facial recognition tech being used by police departments that could identify people even when wearing masks.

Though having a surveillance camera pointed at your door is incredibly invasive, wide scale facial recognition use in my opinion constitutes the greater threat to personal privacy not to mention racial issues, false results etc that are common with this tech. However, there was some positive news over the past year or so from the West. Most notably, was that Facebook banned the use and development of all facial recognition technology, which is a massive step especially as social media platforms had been identified as one of the larger potential users of this tech. Furthermore, in the US, many states and cities had banned the use of facial recognition, and a push for a federal ban has been underway for over a year now. This was similarly the case in the EU which had discussed having a 5 year moratorium on all facial recognition technology in public places. And this included a ban on police using the technology in public places as well as using it for predictive policing which uses the power of AI to profile people who will potentially carry out a crime.

However, the initially proposed facial recognition ban in the EU has recently been reversed and it is now up to each member country to do their own assessments and adopt the tech or not.

And this gets to the heart of the issue that I wanted to bring up in this episode. As a consequence of the friendly though intense Christmas discussions one very large concern was brought up, namely that during the pandemic there appears to have been a disproportionate increase in the amount of surveillance and security technologies adopted across the world by governments and private corporations alike.

I’ll post a few reports and articles in the shownotes that overall seem to indicate that though a number of technologies like facial recognition or general AI surveillance were already on the rise prior to Covid, the trend certainly increased substantially once the pandemic was underway. And even by certain accounts, has made the surveillance increases after 9/11 seem mild compared to the increases in the past 2 years.

And though the justification for this increase is of course going to usually be to deal with or fight the pandemic, I think that we need to be constantly asking the question if the price is worth it especially when there are large scale actions taken that are unknown to the people it will impact.

Most notably, and perhaps the main initiation for this episode being generated, concerns where I come from, Canada.

At the end of December, just in time for Christmas, Canada’s Federal government admitted to secretly tracking 33 million phones during the lockdowns. As Canada’s entire population is 38 million, this was not a small minority of citizens that were tracked by their government without their consent or knowledge. The public health agency of Canada bought location and movement data from Canadian telecom giant Telus with the justification to “understand possible links between the movement of populations within Canada and the spread of COVID-19,”

As someone who was actually in favour of voluntary track and trace programmes early in the pandemic and even critical of for instance where I currently live, Spain’s lack of one, I don’t think that a covert action like this can be justified even during a pandemic. Especially when the organisation apparently plans to continue the tracking for the next 5 years. What is perhaps even more concerning is that the public health agency of Canada’s privacy management division conducted an assessment and “determined that since no personal information is being acquired there were no concerns under the Privacy Act.” On one hand it was great that the data was anonymised, but on another it was only an internal division of the governmental agency that assessed the privacy concerns. Once this news became public however, independent critics were quick to point out the possibilities for re-identifying data that has been ‘de-identified.’

In another example, Israel had been using live phone tracking targeting confirmed omicron infected people in late 2021. Luckily this was stopped after only a few days and may have supported the initial slowdown of Omicron infection. However in the press release it was mentioned that the “Use of the cellphone tracking in the future will be reassessed in accordance with morbidity.” I can fully appreciate the justification to use a tool that might actually have worked that might infringe on liberties and privacy for a short time, especially during a crisis period. I’m not trying to avoid this aspect, my main concern, and the one that was brought up in the discussions that I was made aware of is that specific comments like the one above and the actions that follow, can gradually lead a population to become accustomed to these acts as a normal state of affairs. If these governmental overreaches become common practice or as a new state of normal during a pandemic, it makes them much more likely to be continued once a pandemic ends, and easier for a public to accept similar surveillance and security measures that were enacted after 9/11 through the rhetoric of fighting terrorism that remain with us today.

A good example of this is what is happening in New York right now where the mayor wants to fully embrace surveillance and security technology by the police, as part of an $11 billion budget for the NYPD. From infrared cameras in public buildings, new weapon scanners to replace metal detectors in schools, to a general expansion of facial recognition technology across the city. Though gun violence and not the pandemic is the justification that is given, and an initial pushback against the expansion has happened, there has not been a significant outcry as most probably would have happened in years past. Especially given the clear examples where in particular facial recognition tech has led to false arrests, misidentifications, racial issues, and police manipulation. I’ll have links in the shownotes if you want to read more about these specific problems.

https://www.flawedfacedata.com/#footnote5_rxipmz5

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/08/adams-police-surveillance-technology-00006230

https://thenextweb.com/news/cops-are-running-amok-with-artificial-intelligence?utm_campaign=Neural%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=144684675&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–bsajtDpLubwf-Q7_PHIXLvp0upASQrfYCu5ZPH-an4lKnFldVODv3RL3VLnd6Ms4xk4XXWwgxmY-oDCILPMX2mmpQ2g&utm_content=144684675&utm_source=hs_email

Essentially it appears that as we have used new and expanded forms of surveillance technologies for the better part of 2 years to fight aspects of this pandemic, we may have grown accustomed to the idea that more of this type of technology is a desirable and even a normal part of society. Which should be troubling for everyone. And as everyone has grown tired with the pandemic circumstances we have found ourselves in, many of us would even gladly accept some of these new technologies if they are proposed to end the problems and bring some safety and normalcy to our lives. Which is the age old argument of safety vs sovereignty. Now I’ve purposefully ignored the vaccine passports due to the loaded ideas that come with them, though it has of course been argued as being one if not the main technology that fits in this trend.

So if it wasn’t before, this final part of the podcast is going to be controversial and I will fully admit, is a leap and borders on the unusual or unconventional, but is interesting to think about at the very least as I like to end each episode discussing more of the future ramifications of the technologies and trends discussed on the podcast.

So why might this be even more concerning for our future, than it is for today?