Governments Worldwide Abuse COVID Surveillance Powers

From social security numbers to toll booth scanners, the government’s ability to track or surveil us will usually expand beyond their allegedly benign or useful original intention.

As Freedom House predicted in 2020, and as the Associated Press (A.P.) reported in detail this week, the tracking technologies designed to save lives from COVID-19 are used for many other government purposes.

A.P. examined what they rightly call the “firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses” that governments gobbled up via allegedly life-saving COVID tracking methods (which are not widely believed to have done much good anyway).

The wire service finds many instances where “authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies.” – READ MORE