The Guardian laat verschillende privacy-activisten aan het woord over de wildgroei aan surveillance als antwoord op de Coronacrisis.
“Most of these measures don’t have sunset clauses. They could establish what many people are describing as a new normal,” Ron Deibert, who heads the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, said in an interview with the Guardian.
“I think we have to be really vigilant about that to make sure there are appropriate safeguards in place because the potential for the abuse of power is pretty extreme … so it’s a little bit like 9/11 on steroids.”
Campaigners have also warned the focus on surveillance measures may be diverting resources from health-focused approaches,such as improving testing capability or supplying hospitals with more medical equipment.
“It’s this kind of technological ‘solutionism’ that might look good on paper but is actually undermining efforts to fight the disease in the long run,” said Edin Omanovic, advocacy director at the London-based charity Privacy International.
The Guardian: Growth in surveillance may be hard to scale back after pandemic, experts say