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Much like air journey was essentially modified post-9/11 — justified by nationwide safety and the “war on terror” — the world is now profoundly completely different than its pre-COVID-19 state. Freedoms taken without any consideration in 2019 had been abruptly taken away in 2020, once more justified by nationwide safety and public well being.
But now, even with COVID-19 neutralized, applied sciences supposedly put in place to observe and observe the virus haven’t gone away. On the opposite, they’re nonetheless getting used and expanded all through the world, revealing that mass monitoring of the worldwide inhabitants wasn’t about COVID-19 in spite of everything however one thing a lot greater, with the potential to get rid of freedom as we all know it.
A year-plus investigation by The Associated Press reveals a regarding pattern worldwide wherein pandemic-era mass surveillance applied sciences are being utilized as devices of management.
“In the pandemic’s bewildering early days, millions worldwide believed government officials who said they needed confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop coronavirus’ spread. In return, governments got a firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses,” AP famous.1
Now people are discovering that knowledge is getting used in opposition to them — proscribing journey and activism, in regulation enforcement circumstances and even being shared with spy businesses. As John Scott-Railton with web watchdog Citizen Lab instructed AP, “Any intervention that increases state power to monitor individuals has a long tail and is a ratcheting system. Once you get it, is very unlikely it will ever go away.”2
In China, residents had been required to put in cellphone apps that produce QR codes relying on well being standing. A inexperienced consequence, primarily based on PCR take a look at outcomes, permits an individual to maneuver about freely whereas a yellow or pink consequence restricted journey or required residence confinement. Following widespread demonstrations, the nation said it could now not implement national-level well being codes to open up journey between provinces.