The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Set Off A Massive Expansion Of Government Surveillance. Civil Libertarians Aren't Sure What To Do | Buzzfeed News - Rosy Gray & Caroline Haskins:
March 30, 2020 - "The coronavirus pandemic, which has grown to over 740,000 cases and 35,000 deaths around the world, has been so singular an event that even some staunch advocates for civil liberties say they’re willing to accept previously unthinkable surveillance measures. 'I’m very concerned' about civil liberties,' writer Glenn Greenwald, cofounder of the Intercept ... told BuzzFeed News. 'But at the same time, I'm also much more receptive to proposals that in my entire life I never expected I would be, because of the gravity of the threat.' Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his reporting on the disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed a vast secret infrastructure of US government surveillance....
"And he is far from the only prominent civil libertarian and opponent of surveillance trying to calibrate their response as governments around the world are planning or have already implemented location-tracking programs to monitor coronavirus transmission, and have ordered wide-scale shutdowns closing businesses and keeping people indoors. Broad expansions of surveillance power that would have been unimaginable in February are being presented as fait accompli in March....
"While the US hasn’t announced a nationwide stay-at-home order like France and Italy have, large parts of the US are under some degree of lockdown, with nonessential businesses shuttered and nonessential activities outside the home either banned or discouraged. And while President Trump and his allies have focused on the economic devastation wrought by this shutdown, some libertarians have raised concerns about the damage those decrees have done to people's freedoms....
"Surveillance at previously politically unimaginable scales has reached countries around the world.... In South Korea, the government is mapping the movements of COVID-19 patients using data from mobile carriers, credit card companies, and the Institute of Public Health and Environment. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's internal security agency to tap into a previously undisclosed cache of cellphone data to trace the movements of infected persons in that country and in the West Bank. And in the Indian state of Karnataka, the government is requiring people in lockdown to send it selfies every hour to prove they are staying home.
"No such tools currently exist in the United States — but ... [t]hose doors are already being broken down. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network — a collaboration between Facebook, Camber Systems, Cuebiq, and health researchers from 13 universities — will use corporate location data from mobile devices to give local officials 'consolidated daily situation reports' about 'social distancing interventions.' Representatives from the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network did not respond to requests for comment....
"Representatives from data analytics company Palantir have reportedly been working with the CDC on collecting and integrating data about COVID-19, while Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state agencies to track patients infected by the virus. Neither Palantir nor Clearview AI responded to requests for comment....
"Those efforts cause concerns for people like Evan Greer, the deputy director of digital rights activist group Fight for the Future, who told BuzzFeed News that such tools, once deployed, would inevitably be used for more purposes than to fight the pandemic. 'We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable,' she said. 'It's not necessarily a question of if data that was handed over to the government because of this crisis would be repurposed. It's a matter of when.'"
March 30, 2020 - "The coronavirus pandemic, which has grown to over 740,000 cases and 35,000 deaths around the world, has been so singular an event that even some staunch advocates for civil liberties say they’re willing to accept previously unthinkable surveillance measures. 'I’m very concerned' about civil liberties,' writer Glenn Greenwald, cofounder of the Intercept ... told BuzzFeed News. 'But at the same time, I'm also much more receptive to proposals that in my entire life I never expected I would be, because of the gravity of the threat.' Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his reporting on the disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed a vast secret infrastructure of US government surveillance....
"And he is far from the only prominent civil libertarian and opponent of surveillance trying to calibrate their response as governments around the world are planning or have already implemented location-tracking programs to monitor coronavirus transmission, and have ordered wide-scale shutdowns closing businesses and keeping people indoors. Broad expansions of surveillance power that would have been unimaginable in February are being presented as fait accompli in March....
"While the US hasn’t announced a nationwide stay-at-home order like France and Italy have, large parts of the US are under some degree of lockdown, with nonessential businesses shuttered and nonessential activities outside the home either banned or discouraged. And while President Trump and his allies have focused on the economic devastation wrought by this shutdown, some libertarians have raised concerns about the damage those decrees have done to people's freedoms....
"Surveillance at previously politically unimaginable scales has reached countries around the world.... In South Korea, the government is mapping the movements of COVID-19 patients using data from mobile carriers, credit card companies, and the Institute of Public Health and Environment. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's internal security agency to tap into a previously undisclosed cache of cellphone data to trace the movements of infected persons in that country and in the West Bank. And in the Indian state of Karnataka, the government is requiring people in lockdown to send it selfies every hour to prove they are staying home.
"No such tools currently exist in the United States — but ... [t]hose doors are already being broken down. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network — a collaboration between Facebook, Camber Systems, Cuebiq, and health researchers from 13 universities — will use corporate location data from mobile devices to give local officials 'consolidated daily situation reports' about 'social distancing interventions.' Representatives from the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network did not respond to requests for comment....
"Representatives from data analytics company Palantir have reportedly been working with the CDC on collecting and integrating data about COVID-19, while Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state agencies to track patients infected by the virus. Neither Palantir nor Clearview AI responded to requests for comment....
"Those efforts cause concerns for people like Evan Greer, the deputy director of digital rights activist group Fight for the Future, who told BuzzFeed News that such tools, once deployed, would inevitably be used for more purposes than to fight the pandemic. 'We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable,' she said. 'It's not necessarily a question of if data that was handed over to the government because of this crisis would be repurposed. It's a matter of when.'"
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