Today’s Big Story
Coronavirus. It’s that nagging, just below the surface pull on everyone’s mind, and with good reason. With confirmed cases of the Coronavirus sprawling over 70 countries (as of the time I’m writing this on March 4) and over 90,000 confirmed cases worldwide, much of the world is just now waking up to some of the tough uncomfortable decisions faced by lawmakers when posed with containing a pandemic. While uncertainty around the virus and its global effects abound, news this week from the World Health Organization suggests there’s reason to believe containment is indeed possible — at a cost.
Citing recent figures emerging out of China showing a decrease in the number of new confirmed cases, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “We are in unchartered territory,” but added, “containment of COVID-19 is feasible and must remain the top priority for all countries.”
China, which still has the lion’s share of cases globally, was held as the model to emulate for containing the pathogen. It’s an undeniable fact that the Chinese government, after notable controversy, mobilized at a mind-boggling pace to quarantine cities, screen millions of people for the disease, and use surveillance technologies to enforce lockdowns.
This, by all accounts, seems to have been effective at slowing the virus’ spread.
While much reporting in recent weeks has focused on the Chinese government’s ineptness at spotting the outbreak early on and subsequent coverups to diminish the outbreak’s severity, once the cat was out of the bag, officials made an abrupt about-face.
Essentially overnight, the Chinese government shut down the city of Wuhan, isolating nearly 11 million people and creating an artificial ghost town. That unprecedented siloing was made possible by the state’s expansive surveillance apparatus, decades in the making.
Since the outbreak occurred, the Chinese government has deployed drones equipped with facial recognition software to detect people walking without a facemask on, infrared scanners have been stationed at train stations and airports to measure body heat to snuff out people with a fever, and roaming robots are reminding potentially at-risk residents to stay indoors. Even with this juggernaut of surveillance technologies available, China reportedly went a step further and took a step out of North Korea’s playbook. According to The New York Times, officials asked pressured Wuhan residents to rat out friends and neighbors suspected of being sick.
Now, as the state claims to have started to stem new cases and citizens are being instructed to return to work, new surveillance tools are appearing. According to recent reporting in the New York Times, those returning to work are subject to constant monitoring by a new required mobile tracking software. Workers sign up for the app and are assigned a color code of green, yellow or red. That color corresponds with a person’s health and is used to decide whether or not individuals can leave quarantine, access subways, or walk out into public spaces
While such an app, under normal circumstances, might run against the grain of a privacy advocate one can understand its rationality in a context of an impending pandemic. But when does that context cease to justify its ends?
According to the same New York Times article, the reporter’s analyzed the software’s code determined that it could share information with police.
That’s just the start. The Chinese government also just passed a new law that effectively bars people from posting any negative content about the government online. The new law, officially called The Provision on the Governance of Online Information Content Ecosystem officially took effect this Sunday. While the change has reportedly been in the works since December, the timing of its implementation is peculiar at the least. According to a Business Insider report quoting a government document, the state says it is enacting the law to “create a positive online ecosystem,” and “preserve national security and the public interest.”
Here’s Business Insider’s Bill Bostock:
“The law splits online content into three groups: "encouraged," "negative," and "illegal," according to an unofficial translation by Jeremy Daum, who runs the China Law Translate project.
Though the new law contains conditions borrowed from existing national security laws, it also contains new conditions that Daum described as "distressingly vague and easily abused."
Online censorship, to some degree, is nothing new in China, but the new law appears to mark a further commitment by the government to dissuade dissent. More immediately, the timing of the law has, ironically, worried some who fear it could stymie the spread of accurate information about the Coronavirus pandemic.
Despite failing to initially contain the virus within its borders, these extreme tactics issued by the Chinese government were viewed affectionately by some, including the World Health Organization, which previously praised the Chinese government for its fast-acting containment efforts.
But China’s government operates explicitly in a top-down totalitarian system unmired by prolonged debates and public inquiry produced in more representative democracies. That direct, unilateral decision making power leads to “effective” outcomes, at the expense of measured discussions over how new tools may be used in the future to harm vulnerable groups.
This is all to say that in times of great distress, it is more important than ever to consider what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of security. In the United States, in months following the harrowing September 11 terrorist attacks, a simial calculation was made. Acting out of fear, Americans relinquished their rights and stood by as the government enacted the country’s most invasive surveillance policies (including the Patriot Act) all in the name of “safety” and “fighting terrorism.”
The Chinese “communist” government is an easy, prescient example to point to when pondering the possibility of opportunistic expanses of surveillance power, but I would argue that the vast majority of government’s, when given the opportunity, will opt for more surveillance, more power, and more authority rather than less. While this might be welcomed in the context of preventing a Spanish Flu level pandemic, the sacrifices made in the short term will outlive any disease and could shape the society that emerges on the other side.
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In other news…
***Smart Cities or Surveillance State?***
Zimbabwe is reportedly spending millions to implement “Smart CIties,” but critics worry the technology could be used for mass surveillance and to target political dissidents. The “Smart City Initiative,” a pet project of current president Emmerson Mnangagwa and aims to transform everything from roads and bridges to schools and housing units.
Here’s The Standard, quoting Mnangagwa:
“The principle of a smart city is based on technology, but technology is not only about security; it’s about the delivery of service efficiently in a modern way using cutting-edge innovations.”
“So the idea of security is just one little aspect,” he said, pointing out that cameras would be used to control traffic, monitor crime, and create a safe environment for the population on the streets.”
Tied at the hip to Zimbabwe’s smart city development is Chinese technology company Huawei. The telecommunication giant, which has aggressively sold its technologies and offered loans to developing African countries, is reportedly responsible for the bulk of Zimbabwe’s new technology. Huawei’s even reportedly spent $978 million to lay fiber optic cable connecting two of the country’s major cities to South Africa.
***Pope Francis versus AI***
The Catholic Church becomes the latest entity to speak out against unregulated facial recognition technologies. In a joint statement with IBM and Microsoft, Pope Francis detailed the need for assigning ethics to facial recognition usage, and artificial intelligence algorithms more broadly.
Here’s a small snippet of the statement.
"New forms of regulation must be encouraged to promote transparency and compliance with ethical principles, especially for advanced technologies that have a higher risk of impacting human rights, such as facial recognition."
"This asymmetry, by which a select few know everything about us while we know nothing about them, dulls critical thought and the conscious exercise of freedom.”
***Mad New Yorkers***
Over 200 New Yorkers have signed a petition demanding an end to the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. The petition, which was accompanied by a letter from over twenty civil liberty groups, railed against “snooping devices,” that could be installed in over 18,000 cameras city-wide. According to the petition:
“These technologies can track everyone who lives and works in public spaces by means of a unique identifying marker that is difficult to change or hide –our own faces.”
The petition comes amidst renewed scrutiny of law enforcement companies all around the country working with lightly regulated and little known facial recognition companies. At the top of that list of companies is Clearview AI.
Despite previously denying any association with the company, recent reporting revealed that the NYPD ran more than 11,000 searches through Clearview AI’s program.
***Cyber vigilantes***
In that case, the Vigilante app would broadcast alerts of nearby 911 calls and let nearby users send live videos of what was happening on the ground. While the app instructed users “not to interfere” with crimes, the signaling was anything but clear and was criticized by police for encouraging people to live out their inner Daredevil. Apple promptly removed the app from its App Store.
Rebranded as Citizen, the app got rid of it’s reporting feature and says it has shifted towards, “safety,” and “avoiding crime.” New reporting from the Intercept’s Belle Lin and Camille Baker, however, shows that old habits die hard, and Citizen might be hopping back into the vigilante game.
And that’s a potential problem. The Intercept explains:
“Experts say that, if not addressed with great care, what Citizen does next could set the stage for invasive advertising, greater injustice for vulnerable people, and increased government surveillance. User-powered crime reporting has been rife with racism, panic, and concerns users might bring about personal harm — issues not just for Citizen’s predecessor app Vigilante but also for platforms like Amazon’s Ring, which makes home security cameras and a related social network, and Nextdoor, an app that networks neighbors with one another to communicate about crime and other matters.”
Long Reads/Food for Thought
You’re under arrest—and live on camera
By Alex Pasternack for Fast Company
As discussed in last week’s State of Surveillance, technology companies selling body cameras are integrating live-streaming capabilities into their cameras. This has the potential upside of holding more police officers accountable, but it leaves many other questions unanswered.
“There are also unprecedented questions about what this technology means for the public. A connected network of cameras providing up-close, real-time images from the street or inside buildings or homes raises civil rights concerns that pre-recorded video and stationary surveillance footage does not. Experts caution that streaming live police video could also expose sensitive footage to abuses like leaks and hacking. And live video risks transforming tools that are intended for transparency into roving, on-the-ground nodes in a growing web of surveillance technologies.”
ICE’s New York Office Uses a Rigged Algorithm to Keep Virtually All Arrestees In Detention. The ACLU Says It’s Unconstitutional
By Sam Biddle for The Intercept
Alright, that’s it for now. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for another issue this Friday.
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