5 ms·

Police seize on Covid-19 tech to expand global surveillance – AP News

28 points by raybb 4y ago

marssaxman 4y ago
Well, that's a shocker. Who could have imagined that would happen?
seydor 4y ago
I wonder if there s going to be a tipping point when policing will be considered a bigger burden than crime
- voakbasda 4y ago
  They already passed that point in my book.
shadowgovt 4y ago
It's really stupid policy long-term to abuse health-related data (especially public-health-related data) because it makes it far less likely the data will be volunteered in the next pandemic, and that will hurt public safety a lot more than the transient issues it's used to pursue.
- Aerroon 4y ago
  But won't people be labeled conspiracy theorists (or some equivalent) the next pandemic as well? The authorities will claim it's safe and that'll be good enough for a lot of people.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It's a trade-off. People take on risk of the information being abused for the benefit of not living through quite so many years of a pandemic. Problem is, when the authorities abuse the collected data, the trade-off balance changes and everyone gets to live through a longer pandemic as a result.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    There's too many broad strokes in your post. What countries / etc do "people" and "authorities" refer to? Whether or not people are going to be labeled conspiracy theorist varies wildly based on who is actually being talked about. Anyways to the article, of course individuals within any government will abuse their power. But as long as things are kept transparent the rest of the government can react to those abuses. Like in Australia, "Police in both states did not address AP questions regarding why they sought the data, and lawmakers in Queensland and Victoria have since tightened the rules on police access to QR check-in information." . w.r.t. the US, the Federal government purchased data types that were already available _pre-pandemic_ a (cell phone locations). The article does not claim or suggest that the contact tracing efforts were used inappropriately. Instead, existing 3rd party sources (your phone company) continued to sell data as they've pretty much always done.
- constantcrying 4y ago
  You are assuming "public health" is the actual goal, which is obviously wrong. Any government which lets the NSA spy on its citizens obviously wants social control via knowledge over the digital lives of their citizens. It may be hard to accept but "covid conspiracy theorists" were obviously right when they claimed that the push for digitized health measures was partially due to the government wanting to collect that data for themselves. I find it somewhat funny and quite unnerving to see "this once the government actually needs our data" messaging.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Governments are not a monolith and different actors within them can (and often do) have competing goals. To focus on the US: the NSA's goal is protection via knowledge, and (personal opinion) we've done a poor job of constraining the means by which they achieve it. The CDC's goal is public health protection via tracking and mitigation of disease outbreak. Data collection is definitely a part of it (before the pandemic, you would sometimes get a call from the CDC if, for example, you were at a major public event where there was a norovirus outbreak). But the CDC's goals aren't the same as the NSA's goals except in the broadest "public protection" sense, and it could be considered a failing of the executive and legislative systems that there isn't a strong firewall between the data (or perhaps not... Such firewalls were cited as a major stumbling block that prevented identification of the 9/11 threat, so these things really are trade-offs). But all those details aside, the meta issue of "If you abuse information given to you by the public, as per their perception, they'll stop giving it to you" is real.
    - constantcrying 4y ago
      Government agencies all are nominally centrally controlled by the elected goverenment. Any sustained abuse by those agencies is either severe neglect by that government or intended.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        Or, third option, a democratically elected system elected by a populace that disagrees on what "abuse" means in this context.

28 points by raybb 4y ago

marssaxman 4y ago

Well, that's a shocker. Who could have imagined that would happen?

seydor 4y ago

I wonder if there s going to be a tipping point when policing will be considered a bigger burden than crime

voakbasda 4y ago
They already passed that point in my book.

shadowgovt 4y ago

It's really stupid policy long-term to abuse health-related data (especially public-health-related data) because it makes it far less likely the data will be volunteered in the next pandemic, and that will hurt public safety a lot more than the transient issues it's used to pursue.

Aerroon 4y ago
But won't people be labeled conspiracy theorists (or some equivalent) the next pandemic as well? The authorities will claim it's safe and that'll be good enough for a lot of people.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's a trade-off. People take on risk of the information being abused for the benefit of not living through quite so many years of a pandemic. Problem is, when the authorities abuse the collected data, the trade-off balance changes and everyone gets to live through a longer pandemic as a result.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  There's too many broad strokes in your post. What countries / etc do "people" and "authorities" refer to? Whether or not people are going to be labeled conspiracy theorist varies wildly based on who is actually being talked about. Anyways to the article, of course individuals within any government will abuse their power. But as long as things are kept transparent the rest of the government can react to those abuses. Like in Australia, "Police in both states did not address AP questions regarding why they sought the data, and lawmakers in Queensland and Victoria have since tightened the rules on police access to QR check-in information." . w.r.t. the US, the Federal government purchased data types that were already available _pre-pandemic_ a (cell phone locations). The article does not claim or suggest that the contact tracing efforts were used inappropriately. Instead, existing 3rd party sources (your phone company) continued to sell data as they've pretty much always done.
constantcrying 4y ago
You are assuming "public health" is the actual goal, which is obviously wrong. Any government which lets the NSA spy on its citizens obviously wants social control via knowledge over the digital lives of their citizens. It may be hard to accept but "covid conspiracy theorists" were obviously right when they claimed that the push for digitized health measures was partially due to the government wanting to collect that data for themselves. I find it somewhat funny and quite unnerving to see "this once the government actually needs our data" messaging.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Governments are not a monolith and different actors within them can (and often do) have competing goals. To focus on the US: the NSA's goal is protection via knowledge, and (personal opinion) we've done a poor job of constraining the means by which they achieve it. The CDC's goal is public health protection via tracking and mitigation of disease outbreak. Data collection is definitely a part of it (before the pandemic, you would sometimes get a call from the CDC if, for example, you were at a major public event where there was a norovirus outbreak). But the CDC's goals aren't the same as the NSA's goals except in the broadest "public protection" sense, and it could be considered a failing of the executive and legislative systems that there isn't a strong firewall between the data (or perhaps not... Such firewalls were cited as a major stumbling block that prevented identification of the 9/11 threat, so these things really are trade-offs). But all those details aside, the meta issue of "If you abuse information given to you by the public, as per their perception, they'll stop giving it to you" is real.
  - constantcrying 4y ago
    Government agencies all are nominally centrally controlled by the elected goverenment. Any sustained abuse by those agencies is either severe neglect by that government or intended.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      Or, third option, a democratically elected system elected by a populace that disagrees on what "abuse" means in this context.