How the technology for the security evolves with the Coronavirus
You may have heard about it and more because some people in certain countries that impose Quarantine don’t respect it. A bit like a James Bond movie as we’re a bad guy in the case of being spied on.
Let’s get back to the beginning. If you follow me on Twitter, you may know that I’m making a Thread since March 7 about the security and precisely the methods used in any country in the world. I talked about it in my precedent article. Since the beginning of the global pandemic, technological progress and especially cameras are everywhere.
As said the French president Emmanuel Macron, “we’re at war” and at every wars such as the first or second world war, the technological inventions have been extremly presents at every moments !
Because China was the first country infected by the virus and more exactly, in Wuhan, we already knew that China has very perfectionnal technologies but was going “far” at this time such as the camera to have a look in the whole city and see whether some citizens do not abide by the established rules by the country. Also, a Chinese company, which is working with the police, assured that its facial recognition software is capable of recognizing someone even if he (or she) wears a mask.
Then, South Korea which was the second country that got the most Coronavirus cases at this time send text messages indicating the latest movements of people affected by the coronavirus. The result: paranoid citizens flirt with each other and publicly denounce themselves.
Then, many other countries followed China and South Korea. Not only in Asia but also in Europe. France which was the first European country that got the first Coronavirus case has opted for an analog control of containment when Korea deployed an app. The country also got some drones in the Capital and in Nice to tell the people to stay at home.
It doesn’t really sounds working at the moment. In the South of Europe, Italy tightened police containment controls. Anyone lying about the fact that they are not under quarantine risks up to 12 years in prison. Authorities also have to possibility to control data.
In Spain, the government lauched coronamadrid.com , an application to geolocate people infected with COVID-19 in the capital.
In Germany, there aren’t many rules, excepted that is the first European Country who closed its borders. But they can still move in many cities such as the capital.
If we move a bit out of Europe, the measures can be similar or even or more severe. In Taiwan, the phone is tracked by Taiwanese government to make sure every citizens abide by the rules.
But the top may be Singapore which citizens downloaded TraceTogether, the government’s open source application. Thanks to Bluetooth, it can identify anyone who has been within 2m of an infected person for at least 30 minutes.
In US, the government analyzed geolocation data to measure mobility or compliance with confinement by relying on the opaque mobile marketing industry, known for reselling the information it collects.
But that’s not it. American media VICE saw NSO Group’s new surveillance software, which the company is pitching to governments to track COVID-19 patients. It’s a mass surveillance system that’s easy to use, granular, and has privacy experts very worried. This remind the Cambridge Analytica’s affair in March 2018.
It would too much to talk about every other countries and many readers usually stop themselves when an article is too long. My article was a bit a copy/paste about my unfinishable Thread which I told you at the beginning and in my precedent article. You can access there by following the hypertext link which I used.
This is gonna be my last article about the Coronavirus. First because I start feeling too tired to talk about it than before because this may be historic and exceptionnal in the world, but my brain is now blowing up and the topic doesn’t interest me anymore, but also because my first article about this had a pretty good success and I don’t want it grow up on Medium like that.
Don’t forget to stay at home, because I’d like to remind the Covid-19 may be 10 times deadlier than seasonal flu and no vaccine have been found … yet.
I think that never the World Health Organization worked as much as that !