[News] As Coronavirus Surveillance Escalates, Personal Privacy Plummets

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/coronavirus-surveillance-tracking-privacy.html
As
Coronavirus Surveillance Escalates, Personal Privacy Plummets
By Natasha Singer and Choe Sang-Hun
------------------------------

*Tracking entire populations to combat the pandemic now could open the
doors to more invasive forms of government snooping later.*

   -

   Published March 23, 2020Updated March 24, 2020

In South Korea, government agencies are harnessing surveillance-camera
footage, smartphone location data and credit card purchase records to
help trace
the recent movements of coronavirus patients and establish virus
transmission chains.

In Lombardy, Italy, the authorities are analyzing location data transmitted
by citizens’ mobile phones
<https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_marzo_17/coronavirus-gallera-in-lombardia-1640-decessi-16620-positivi-e3875744-686d-11ea-9725-c592292e4a85.shtml>
to determine how many people are obeying a government lockdown order and
the typical distances they move every day. About 40 percent are moving
around “too much,” an official recently said.

In Israel, the country’s internal security agency is poised to start using
a cache of mobile phone location data
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-cellphone-tracking.html>
— originally intended for counterterrorism operations — to try to pinpoint
citizens who may have been exposed to the virus.

As countries around the world race to contain the pandemic, many are
deploying digital surveillance tools as a means to exert social control,
even turning security agency technologies on their own civilians. Health
and law enforcement authorities are understandably eager to employ every
tool at their disposal to try to hinder the virus — even as the
surveillance efforts threaten to alter the precarious balance between
public safety and personal privacy on a global scale.

Yet ratcheting up surveillance to combat the pandemic now could permanently
open the doors to more invasive forms of snooping later. It is a lesson
Americans learned after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, civil
liberties experts say.

Nearly two decades later, law enforcement agencies have access to
higher-powered surveillance systems, like fine-grained location tracking
and facial recognition — technologies that may be repurposed to further
political agendas like anti-immigration policies
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/us/politics/ice-drivers-licenses-facial-recognition.html>.
Civil liberties experts warn that the public has little recourse to
challenge these digital exercises of state power.

“We could so easily end up in a situation where we empower local, state or
federal government to take measures in response to this pandemic that
fundamentally change the scope of American civil rights,” said Albert Fox
Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight
Project <https://www.stopspying.org/programs>, a nonprofit organization in
Manhattan.

As an example, he pointed to a law
<https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2019/S7919> enacted by New York
State this month that gives Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo unlimited authority to
rule by executive order during state crises like pandemics and hurricanes.
The law allows him to issue emergency response directives that could
overrule any local regulations.

This month, Australia’s health minister publicly chastised a doctor whom
she accused of treating patients while experiencing symptoms of the virus —
essentially outing him by naming the small clinic in Victoria where he
worked with a handful of other physicians.

The health provider, who tested positive for the coronavirus, responded
with a Facebook post
<https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/cheap-opportunity-infected-melbourne-doctor-slams-inaccurate-unfair-reports-c-734674>
saying the minister had incorrectly characterized his actions for political
gain and demanded an apology.

“That could extend to anyone, to suddenly have the status of your health
blasted out to thousands or potentially millions of people,” said Chris
Gilliard, an independent privacy scholar based in the Detroit area. “It’s a
very strange thing to do because, in the alleged interest of public health,
you are actually endangering people.”

But in emergencies like pandemics, privacy must be weighed against other
considerations, like saving lives, said Mila Romanoff, data and governance
lead for United Nations Global Pulse <https://www.unglobalpulse.org/about/>,
a U.N. program that has studied using data to improve emergency responses
to epidemics like Ebola and dengue fever.

“We need to have a framework that would allow companies and public
authorities to cooperate, to enable proper response for the public good,”
Ms. Romanoff said. To reduce the risk that coronavirus surveillance efforts
might violate people’s privacy, she said, governments and companies should
limit the collection and use of data to only what is needed. “The challenge
is,” she added, “how much data is enough?”

The fast pace of the pandemic, however, is prompting governments to put in
place a patchwork of digital surveillance measures in the name of their own
interests, with little international coordination on how appropriate or
effective they are.

In hundreds of cities in China, the government is requiring citizens to use
software
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/business/china-coronavirus-surveillance.html>
on their phones that automatically classifies each person with a color code
— red, yellow or green — indicating contagion risk. The software determines
which people should be quarantined or permitted to enter public places like
subways. But officials have not explained how the system makes such
decisions, and citizens have felt powerless to challenge it.

In Singapore, the Ministry of Health has posted information online about
each coronavirus patient, often in stunning detail, including relationships
to other patients. The idea is to warn individuals who may have crossed
paths with them, as well as alert the public to potentially infected
locations. “Case 219 is a 30-year-old male,” says one entry on the Health
Ministry’s site
<https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/four-more-cases-discharged-seventeen-new-cases-of-covid-19-infection-confirmed>,
who worked at the “Sengkang Fire Station (50 Buangkok Drive),” is “in an
isolation room at Sengkang General Hospital” and “is a family member of
Case 236.”

On Friday, Singapore also introduced a smartphone app for citizens to help
the authorities locate people who may have been exposed to the virus. The
app, called TraceTogether <https://www.tracetogether.gov.sg/>, uses
Bluetooth signals to detect mobile phones that are nearby. If an app user
later tests positive for the virus, the health authorities may examine the
data logs from the app to find people who crossed their paths. A government
official said the app preserved privacy by not revealing users’ identities
to one another.

In Mexico, after public health officials notified Uber about a passenger
infected with the virus, the company suspended the accounts
<https://nypost.com/2020/02/04/uber-suspends-hundreds-of-accounts-after-coronavirus-patient-takes-rides-in-mexico/>
of two drivers who had given him rides, along with more than 200 passengers
who had ridden with those drivers.

In the United States, the White House recently spoke with Google, Facebook
and other tech companies about potentially using aggregated location data
captured from Americans’ mobile phones for public health surveillance of
the virus. Several members of Congress subsequently wrote a letter urging
President Trump
<https://eshoo.house.gov/sites/eshoo.house.gov/files/documents/Eshoo-Wyden-DelBene%20-%20Letter%20to%20Pres%20%26%20VP%20about%20coronavirus%20privacy%20-%203.19.20.pdf>
and Vice President Mike Pence to protect any virus-related data that
companies collected from Americans.

The digital dictates may enable governments to exert more social control
and enforce social distancing during the pandemic. They also raise
questions about when surveillance may go too far.

In January, South Korean authorities began posting detailed location
histories on each person who tested positive for the coronavirus. The site
has included a wealth of information — such as details about when people
left for work, whether they wore masks in the subway, the name of the
stations where they changed trains, the massage parlors and karaoke bars
they frequented and the names of the clinics where they were tested for the
virus.

In South Korea’s highly wired society, however, internet mobs exploited
patient data disclosed by the government site to identify people by name
and hound them.

As other countries increase surveillance, South Korea had an unusual
reaction. Concerned that privacy invasions might discourage citizens from
getting tested for the virus, health officials announced this month that
they would refine their data-sharing guidelines to minimize patient risk.

“We will balance the value of protecting individual human rights and
privacy and the value of upholding public interest in preventing mass
infections,” said Jung Eun-kyeong, the director of South Korea’s Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.

That is a tricky balance that some United States officials may need to
consider.

In New York this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio posted details on Twitter
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200303223818/http:/twitter.com/nycmayor/status/1234968701700595712>
about a lawyer in Westchester County who was the second person in the state
to test positive for the virus — including the name of the man’s
seven-person law firm and the names of the schools attended by two of his
children. A few hours later, The New York Post identified the lawyer
<https://nypost.com/2020/03/03/nyc-lawyer-with-coronavirus-in-severe-condition-health-department/>
by name and was soon referring to him as “patient zero” in the coronavirus
outbreak in New Rochelle.

In a response posted on Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/adina.garbuz/posts/10218749730509115>, Adina
Lewis Garbuz, a lawyer who is the wife of the man, Lawrence Garbuz, pleaded
with the public to focus instead on the personal efforts the family had
made to isolate themselves and notify people who came into contact with
them.

“We would have preferred this all remain private,” Ms. Garbuz wrote in the
Facebook post, “but since it is no longer, I wanted to at least share some
truths and allay people’s fears.”


Natasha Singer reported from New York, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul. Aaron
Krolik and Adam Satariano contributed research.

Natasha Singer is a business reporter covering health technology, education
technology and consumer privacy. @natashanyt
<https://twitter.com/natashanyt>

Choe Sang-Hun is the Seoul bureau chief for The New York Times, focusing on
news on North and South Korea.
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