Ho come un déjà-vu... Forse la Matrice ha cambiato qualcosa. Giacomo <https://www.teenvogue.com/story/mass-surveillance-coronavirus> # More Mass Surveillance to Track the Coronavirus Threatens Black and Brown Communities United States tech companies, public health experts, and government officials have proposed certain types of surveillance as pathways to reopening the country amid the coronavirus pandemic. Technologies including contact tracing proximity apps, facial recognition, drones, and thermal cameras have been touted as potential ways to slow the spread of the virus and aid in future public health emergencies. Despite these proposals, past crises have shown us that mass surveillance will not only fail to save us, but is practically guaranteed to have negative consequences for Black communities and communities of color. In order to safeguard the privacy and rights of the communities that have been hit hardest by COVID-19, it must be asked: Why is mass surveillance being proposed as one of the most viable solutions to the ongoing pandemic, and why aren't resources being channeled into our broken public health infrastructure instead? This is a particularly urgent question as police forces around the country mobilize against Americans standing up against police brutality, and President Trump urges governors to “track” and lock up protesters. The war on drugs is among the most recent instances of the normalization of mass surveillance under the guise of public safety. In April 2015, USA Today detailed the extent of a bulk surveillance program carried out by the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. As part of the now-discontinued operation, both agencies logged “billions of calls” from the U.S. to 116 countries, enabling agents to link calls “to troves of other police and intelligence data.” Wiretapping also played a substantial role during the war on drugs, and in 2015, drug offenses accounted for 79% of all applications for wiretaps. The rhetoric of war and the normalization of surveillance during the war on drugs paved the way for the war on terror. In the aftermath of 9/11, expanded surveillance powers were rapidly granted without regard for the long-lasting implications they would have. The Patriot Act completely transformed the nation’s surveillance authority. As detailed by the ACLU, it increased government power to conduct records searches, secret searches, intelligence searches, and “trap and trace" searches. The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS, a special registration system that disproportionately focused on Arab and Muslim males, was also welcomed as a viable post-9/11 surveillance measure. Both “wars,” in addition to increasing the government’s surveillance powers, have had extremely high human and financial costs and made suspicionless surveillance of those living in and at the intersections of Black, brown, and Muslim communities acceptable. Whether it's policing tactics such as stop and frisk or surveillance programs like the New York Police Department’s Muslim Surveillance and Mapping Program, abstract wars formed during moments of crisis have been used to justify discriminatory policing and surveillance measures against these communities. This is why recent references to “fight a war” against the coronavirus are so unnerving, suggesting that government officials could further the inequalities that have been developed in two previous battles. Mass surveillance has already been welcomed globally as a way to counter the virus. Privacy International, a U.K.-based charity focused on defending privacy, has documented numerous surveillance measures adopted since the pandemic began. In China, an extensive network of CCTV cameras, smartphone monitoring, and facial recognition have been used in what the government has labeled “an all-out people’s war on coronavirus.” In South Korea, credit and debit card transactions, as well as phone-location logs, have been used to trace the movements of those who’ve been infected. In Ecuador, the government has used GPS to monitor individuals in mandatory quarantine. India, the U.K., Singapore, Israel, and numerous other governments have expanded their surveillance capacities, alarming privacy advocates and contributing to the normalization of surveillance. In the U.S., several surveillance technologies have been researched, proposed, and even implemented. Police departments across the country have turned to drones to enforce social distancing measures. DJI Enterprise, a drone company based in China, announced in April that it had already provided drones to 43 police, fire, and public safety organizations from 22 states. Aerial surveillance has been coupled with calls for contact tracing apps, which use technologies such as GPS and Bluetooth to collect data on the movements of people who have contracted the virus. Clearview AI, which faced controversy for taking billions of photos off of social media to develop a facial recognition system, has announced that it is in discussions with government agencies to develop contact tracing apps, NBC News reported. Similarly, Apple and Google announced that they were developing contact tracing software to allow iPhone and Android users to voluntarily report if they had become infected. As noted by Reuters, a significant concern about the apps is that they will "log an overwhelming number of erroneous contacts" and that "privacy worries could limit uptake of the apps." Differing levels of trust, combined with demographic differences in smartphone ownership, pose a challenge to effective implementation of the apps. A recent Pew Research study revealed that only 52% of Americans believe it is at least somewhat acceptable for the government to use people’s cell phones to track the location of those who have tested positive for the virus, while 48% believe it is very or somewhat unacceptable. As the country’s surveillance infrastructure will likely be expanded in response to COVID-19, the privacy concerns of minority communities should not be left out. The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on minority communities has been well documented. Across the U.S., Black, Latino, and low-income communities have had disproportionate numbers of cases and COVID-19-related deaths. Surveillance measures aimed at stopping the spread of the virus will not only center on these communities, but will be harder to remove after they’re implemented. Black communities and communities of color have already had to grapple with race-based surveillance as well. Surveillance technologies are not immune to manipulation, misuse, and bias, and have been used to keep existing racial and economic inequities in place. Whether it's predictive policing programs or social media monitoring of activists, surveillance has been used to further racial profiling, and skewed theories of criminalization, mass incarceration, and marginalization of the homeless, poor, and undocumented. Nationwide protests against police brutality and the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of law enforcement officers have renewed conversations about the threat surveillance poses to protest and dissent. The city of Minneapolis, in particular, has been at the center of these conversations. On May 29, Vox reported that a Predator surveillance drone operated by United States Customs and Border Patrol flew over protests "to provide situational awareness" and help police. According to Buzzfeed News, the Minneapolis Police Department already has an array of surveillance technologies at its hands, including "controversial facial recognition software Clearview AI, license plate readers, body cameras, and video analysis tools." On Saturday, Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington announced that the city of Minneapolis has begun analyzing the data and associations of arrested protesters, using the term “contact tracing” to describe these police investigations. Increasing the country’s surveillance infrastructure without regard to current and historic realities places an additional burden on communities that have already been devastated by the onslaught of the virus. If history has taught us anything, it is that there is no guarantee that the normalization of mass surveillance to stop the spread of the virus will be reversed after the pandemic subsides. The surveillance infrastructures of the war on drugs and the war on terror were both in place for years, and set a precedent for how far privacy can be invaded in the name of crisis, even if that also means disenfranchising communities of color. Our focus should be on constructing a response to COVID-19 that not only safeguards the privacy of each individual, but also redistributes resources into the communities who have been hit hardest by the horrors of this new disease.