COVID-19: how much of your privacy are you willing to give up?
China is dealing with the new coronavirus better than others because of its massive surveillance infrastructure and policies.
Since 9/11, the world population started to give up its privacy more and more, with the promise of being kept safe against terrorism. Today we’re facing a different threat, something maybe, in some ways, more predictable, but faster to spread and affect millions.
I live in Italy, and I live in Lombardy, to be precise, so I’ve been among the first, outside of China, to experience a full lockdown. Restaurants, bars, shops (except the ones selling food and other essential products), schools, museums, churches, movie theaters and other entertainment venues are closed, people can move outside bringing a permit where they declare the reason for such commuting, and the reason can be only work, health or buying food.
While getting into my 4th week of confinement, I want to share some thoughts with you.
Half measures don’t work
At the beginning of the virus outbreak in Italy, the government tried to implement half measures, like limiting the opening time of bars and restaurants (8 am till 6 pm), restrict the movement of people only in the most affected areas, and so on. THESE DID NOT WORK.
Go big or go h̶o̶m̶e̶ to the hospital. I understand the concerns for the economy, and those still stand, but half measures have proven to be ineffective. It’s better to be all in prison for one month, than having this situation going on for one year (or more). Governments such as the US’s and UK’s are quickly changing their stance, understanding the severity of the situation. But it might be too late. It seems they learned nothing from our experience here in Italy.
They did not also work because people didn’t seem to take it really seriously in the beginning. Shopping streets, parks, beaches, were packed in the early days of the “mild lockdown.” This is happening in the USA and UK as well as many other countries. This also because of the many conflicting information that we received, “It’s just the flu” “It’s a little stronger than the flu” “It’s worse than regular flu” “Masks are useless” “Wear masks!” “Wear masks only if…” etc. etc. This caused a lot of confusion.
Meanwhile, in China…
China apparently didn’t report the outbreak right away. The reason could be to avoid looking bad internationally and to its people, or maybe not to spread panic. It depends how you want to read it, I’m not here to judge.
The point is that once they realized how dangerous the situation was, they intervened with an iron fist. The lockdown was a serious one:
- everything was shut down
- no private transportation
- no entering buildings other than yours
- no inviting people at your home
- police checkpoints
- One person out of 3 allowed to go buying food
- mandatory mask in public
and…
Massive surveillance
The surveillance infrastructure in China was massive already, cameras and scans are everywhere; people can be tracked down through their devices; communication is filtered. Chinese people are used to this; that’s quite the norm. This (to our eyes) dystopian scenario turned out useful when having to study millions of citizens’ movements to try understanding how the virus spread, to record who they have been in touch with and potentially infected, to monitor sick people to stay in quarantine, to keep social distancing in check, to check high-temperature on possibly ill people. China is also a wildly cashless society, so here goes away another potential vehicle of contagion. Chinese citizens can also see all their movements being logged in a dedicated app and be notified if they have been in close contact with someone with COVID-19.
Basically, all the tech to put in place in a very effective way all the measures that seem to be now giving hope to China to come out of the tunnel we, in the west, are just adventuring into.
This strict and draconian approach also means that the Chinese are less likely to disobey their government. I spoke with some people in China, all of them agree these measures are making them feel safer, and some of them even said they feel lucky being in China right now, rather than elsewhere.
In Italy, as well as the USA and other countries, we cherish our (apparent) freedom; we bend the rules, make exceptions, we are more individualistic knowing we won’t face severe consequences for such (apparently) innocent sins. But in a moment like this, we’re witnessing how this must be a unified fight. We must act as one. The time for individualism is over; the community is the number one priority. Yet we fight over toilet paper.
How much of your privacy are you willing to lose?
So, the question is:
Assuming that the policies adopted in China are working to stop the pandemic, how much of your privacy are you willing to lose in the name of safety?
Will you be ok with your movement being tracked and people you meet with being registered?
Will you be available to have your face being scanned and recognized all the time?
Losing more privacy or a higher risk of getting sick (and potentially kill others)?
Lots of questions and lots of ethical implications.
Sadly, I don’t have any answers.
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