How to balance the spread of new corona infection, security and freedom? | BRIDGE Technology & Startup Information
Countries around the world are paying attention to the most familiar threats to humankind. Coronavirus threatens employment, global economic activity, international affairs, the health of loved ones, and our own lives. Epidemiologists need data to better understand where and how the coronavirus is spreading in order to combat the spread of the virus. From world to local levels, world leaders need to be able to track the spread of the virus in order to make informed decisions about resource management, addressing shelter restrictions, resuming operations, and more. be.
Technologies such as contact tracking, heat scanning, and facial recognition using smartphones that politicians are testing are all just paraphrases of monitoring, and the trade-offs currently under consideration are since the crisis. May also expand.
Before the spread of the coronavirus infection, one of the most important and popular movements in ethics and social justice was against technology surveillance, especially AI technologies such as facial recognition. It's a list of power-focused topics that counter the worst parts of Big Tech, excessive law enforcement, and potential government abuse. "Survival capitalism" is literally dull, and it feels good to tell the truth about a particular kind of power.
But now, with millions of people suddenly unemployed and about 80,000 people killed by the coronavirus in the United States alone, the problem is no longer a crackdown on power, whether in corporate interests, privacy or security. Nor is it effective. Trade-offs between privacy, security, power and life itself may be very important in the spread of global infections.
The epidemic of coronavirus is an immediate life-threatening threat. No one in the modern world has experienced such an outbreak, so everyone is desperate to adapt. Under these dire circumstances, theoretical concerns about data privacy and government oversight by facial recognition can easily be put aside.
Would it really be bad if coronavirus-related medical records were stored in a large database to help front-line healthcare professionals fight the disease? Or, the data tells epidemiologists that the virus If it helps to track and understand where and how it is spreading? Or if it helps researchers develop treatments? To find out if they have come into contact with a coronavirus patient. And who cares if you have to share your smartphone's data? If it can prevent Super Spreader from infecting hundreds or thousands of people, face recognition Is it really that much of a hassle to deploy a surveillance system?
These questions are legitimate, but overall they are dangerously shallow perspectives.
In the United States after 9/11, a similar trend of the times has permeated. Fear—and a strong desire for solidarity, Congress swiftly passed the Patriot Act with widespread bipartisan support. However, the United States has no foresight to request and implement guardrails, and the federal government has maintained extensive surveillance authority for about 20 years. What we have learned from 9/11 and the Patriot Act (at least what we should have learned) is that a positive approach to threats should not rule out future-proof protection. If it is less than that, you will panic.
The danger posed by the hasty and radical abandonment of privacy and other freedoms is not theoretical. It's not as immediately obvious as the threat posed by the coronavirus. Letting go of privacy means letting go of your power, and it's important to know who holds all the data.
Data may be retained by tech giants like Apple and Google (though they aren't widely trusted anymore), or AI surveillance with far-right radicals like Palantir, Clearview, and Banjo. It could be a tech company. In other cases, your power is directly in the hands of the government. Sometimes, if the government has a contract with a tech company to perform a task like facial recognition monitoring, your data and power can be stolen at the same time.
Perhaps worse, some experts and ethicists believe that systems built or deployed during the spread of the infection will not be dismantled. This means that if you now agree to provide smartphone data to your mobile operator, they are likely to continue to collect that data (even after the infection has subsided). If you agree to quarantine measures such as facial recognition systems deployed throughout the city, are those systems likely to be part of law enforcement standards even after quarantine is over?
I'm not saying that there is no need for difficult trade-offs to spread the infection. Difficult but very important is to understand what concessions need to be accepted and what legal and regulatory safeguards need to be taken.
As a starting point, you can look at some common best practices. The International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communication Surveillance, signed by hundreds of organizations around the world, have long argued that any collective surveillance effort must be necessary, appropriate and appropriate. Data collection decisions need to be made by health authorities, not law enforcement agencies. Privacy considerations should be built into tools like contact tracking apps. Compromises made in the name of public health need to be balanced against the cost of privacy. If a surveillance system is installed, it should be dismantled when the urgent threat of coronavirus has subsided. Data collected during the spread of an infection must have legal protection, including strict restrictions on who can access the data for what purpose and for how long.
This VentureBeat feature series, AI and Surveillance, explores the privacy-surveillance trade-offs that Congressmen are working on, outlines how to track coronaviruses, and crosses politics, technology, and people's lives. Wherever we go, we will take France as a case study of the challenges facing the government.
This is a life-threatening problem. But it is a matter of life and death today, as well as life and death over the years to come.
[Via VentureBeat] @VentureBeat
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