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Snowden: pandemic will end, but surveillance of the population will remain

“Temporary measures will quickly become permanent.”




Governments around the world are using high-tech measures to monitor populations in the fight against the outbreak of coronavirus. Citizens' privacy is sacrificed to slow down infection. Is it worth it?

Edward Snowden doesn't think so.

A former CIA contractor who exposed several CIA and NSA spyware warns that once a technology genie is released from the bottle, it will be very difficult to get it back.

“When we see that emergency measures are being taken, especially today, it is usually difficult to abandon them afterwards,” Snowden said in an interview via videoconferencing at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. - Emergency measures tend to expand. Then the government gradually gets used to the new powers. She’s starting to like it. ”



Proponents of draconian measures argue that conventional rules are not enough during a pandemic, and long-term privacy risks will be eliminated immediately after the outbreak is localized. However, history shows that the temporary suspension of civil liberties subsequently quickly and without much thought is extended. Temporarily transferred powers to the state are rarely returned.

“You should never miss a good crisis, ” Winston Churchill said , and this phrase is the motto of any government that seeks to strengthen control over its citizens, using appropriate crises, including terrorist attacks and the coronavirus pandemic.

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Security services will find a new application for this technology. And when the crisis is over, governments can introduce new laws that make emergency rules permanent and use them to quell dissent and political opposition. In 2005, the US Senate voted to leave on a permanent basis almost all restrictions on civil liberties temporarily implemented under the Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

For example, tracking the location of mobile phones of all citizens helps determine who was in contact with an infected person or who left the quarantine zone. This can be a powerful method of tracking the spread of the virus and the movement of its carriers. But it will also be a tempting tool to track down terrorists - or any other potential enemies of the state, Snowden said.

On March 20, 2020, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin held a meeting of the Presidium of the Coordinating Council to Combat the Spread of Coronavirus. As a result , several decisions were made , including “to organize the creation of a tracking system for citizens in contact with patients with a new coronavirus infection, based on information from mobile operators about the geolocation of a specific person’s cell phone”.

Laws formally adopted to combat terrorism can subsequently be widely used to infringe on the rights and freedoms of citizens, as the experience of different countries shows .

Face recognition and infrared scanners


Machine vision systems have become particularly popular monitoring methods in a pandemic. In China, infrared scanners at railway stations identify patients with fever, and in Moscow, face recognition systems identify people who violate quarantine.

In such circumstances, even the dubious startup Clearview AI got a chance to restore its reputation. This company is engaged in scraping personal photos from social networks for face recognition and identification by photo. The startup is currently negotiating with government agencies to use its technology to track infected patients, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Snowden is particularly concerned that machine vision and artificial intelligence technologies are being added to the arsenal of intelligence services surveillance tools: “They already know what you're looking for on the Internet,” he says. “They already see your phone moving.” Now they see your heartbeat, your pulse. What will happen when they begin to combine this data and apply artificial intelligence to them? ”

FSB Director : We urgently need to deploy the national guard and troops to patrol the streets. Hard curfew, use batons and water cannons. Everyone, without exception, stay home. Close all institutions and the media. Start raids and detentions ...
Prime Minister : And this will help us defeat the coronavirus?
FSB Director : Which coronavirus?
(joke)

It is difficult to strike a balance between security and privacy, even in the best of times, not to mention the global crisis. Snowden does not dispute the severity of the pandemic. But he believes that this is a temporary problem that will ultimately be resolved with vaccines and collective immunity.

However, the consequences of the measures we introduce today will be permanent. That is why the technologies we are adopting now must be proportionate to each phase of the pandemic outbreak. Openness on the part of governments and public consultation will ensure that the rule of law is maintained and that basic human rights are maintained, Snowden said. People can come to terms with draconian privacy practices if they help survive the pandemic. But you should think about the world in which we want to live later, when the coronavirus is defeated.



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