Edward Snowden, the man who exposed the breadth of spying at the US's National Security Agency, has warned that an uptick in surveillance amid the coronavirus crisis could lead to long-lasting effects on civil liberties.

During a video-conference interview for the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival, Snowden said that, theoretically, new powers introduced by states to combat the coronavirus outbreak could remain in place after the crisis has subsided.

Fear of the virus and its spread could mean governments "send an order to every fitness tracker that can get something like pulse or heart rate" and demand access to that data, Snowden said.

"Five years later the coronavirus is gone, this data's still available to them they start looking for new things," Snowden said. "They already know what you're looking at on the internet, they already know where your phone is moving, now they know what your heart rate is. What happens when they start to intermix these and apply artificial intelligence to them?"

While no reports appear to have surfaced so far of states demanding access to health data from wearables like the Apple Watch, many countries are fast introducing new methods of surveillance to better understand and curb the spread of the coronavirus.

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Edward Snowden says COVID-19 could give governments invasive new data-collection powers that could last long after the pandemic - We Are The Mighty

As governments turn to technology to help contain the spread of COVID-19, privacy advocates are expressing concern over how new bio-surveillance practices might stick around long after the pandemic ends.

Edward Snowden, the former CIA contractor who exposed NSA surveillance programs, recently spoke to Danish Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Henrik Moltke about surveillance in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

"When we see emergency measures passed, particularly today, they tend to be sticky," Snowden said. "The emergency tends to be expanded. Then the authorities become comfortable with some new power. They start to like it."

Snowden is especially concerned about the long-term implications of strengthening the national surveillance infrastructure. Granted, the surveillance measures we may deploy today say, using biometric facial recognition technology might help to slow the transmission of COVID-19. What's more, these measures might not noticeably curtail our civil liberties, even if they stick around after the pandemic ends.

But the problem is that the surveillance measures we install today will probably still be here decades from now. Over time, they may creep their way into becoming the new normal (unless sunset clauses are enforced). Another possibility is that these new surveillance measures go unused at least until an administration comes along that's not afraid to use them in an unprecedented way. By that point, the public may be helpless.

"You have no civil power remaining to resist it," Snowden said. "Because you cannot coordinate. You cannot gather in public, because the government instantly knows all of these people are around."

Giving the government access to biometrics could open up alarming new ways for governments to spy on citizens, Snowden said.

"They already know what you're looking at on the internet," he said. "They already know where your phone is moving. Now they know what your heart rate is, what your pulse is. What happens when they start to mix these and apply artificial intelligence to it?

Snowden offered an example: A man in the U.S. watches a YouTube video of a federal official giving a speech. The speech angers him. His pulse and heart-rate shoot up, and this biometric data gets recorded by his smartphone. The government, using algorithms that compare biometrics with online activity and other data, puts this man on a watch-list for people deemed to be potential terrorists or other undesirables.

Since the pandemic began, Asia has seen the most noticeable uptick in surveillance measures.

In China, citizens are required to install a smartphone app that assigns them a color code green, yellow or red that represents health status. The exact methodology of the app remains unclear. But less ambiguous are the CCTV cameras that the government has installed above the apartment doors of infected citizens, to ensure they stay inside for a 14-day quarantine.

South Korea has done an exceptional job at containing the spread of COVID-19. One reason is the nation's aggressive use of smartphone tracking: The South Korean government has ordered everyone who tests positive for COVID-19 to install an app that alerts officials if they exit quarantine. Citizens also receive text messages about the movements of infected people, like: "A woman in her 60s has just tested positive [...] Click on the link for the places she visited before she was hospitalized," according to The Guardian.

According to a survey conducted in February by Seoul National University's Graduate School of Public Health, 78.5 percent of citizens said they would sacrifice privacy rights to help prevent a national epidemic.

The U.S. hasn't rolled out similar surveillance tools to help contain the virus, as of March 27. But companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon have been speaking with White House officials about how they might be able to model and help track the spread of the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.

China News Service / Getty

Concerned about the potential ways Silicon Valley and the government might use technology to track the spread of COVID-19, the Electronic Frontier Foundation recently issued ethical guidelines for data collection during the pandemic:

Still, it may be the case that stopping coronavirus requires us to temporarily sacrifice personal privacy, as Jeremy Cliff wrote for the New Statesman:

"So countries are faced with what one might call the "coronavirus trilemma". They can pick two of three things but cannot have them all: limit deaths, gradually lift lockdowns, or uphold cherished civil liberties. Not all countries are facing up to this reality the US remains a notable laggard but most will have to eventually. Those countries that have recognised the choices before them are picking the first two options at the cost of the third, bio-surveillance. It is a choice that has most clearly been made in east Asia. But it is coming to much of the rest of the world too and will transform the role and reach of the state."

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Edward Snowden warns 'bio-surveillance' may outlast coronavirus - Big Think

Im very concerned about civil liberties, writer Glenn Greenwald, cofounder of the Intercept, who built his career as a critic of government surveillance, told BuzzFeed News. But at the same time, Im also much more receptive to proposals that in my entire life I never expected I would be, because of the gravity of the threat.

Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his reporting on the disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed a vast secret infrastructure of US government surveillance. But like others who have spent years raising concerns about government overreach, he now accepts the idea that surveilling people who have contracted the coronavirus could be better than harsher measures to save lives.

The kind of digital surveillance that I spent a lot of years even before Snowden, and then obviously, the two or three years during Snowden advocating against is now something I think could be warranted principally to stave off the more brute solutions that were used in China, Greenwald said.

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They opposed government surveillance. Then the pandemic began. - Hot Air

The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has grown to over 740,000 cases and 35,000 deaths around the world, has been so singular an event that even some staunch advocates for civil liberties say theyre willing to accept previously unthinkable surveillance measures.

Im very concerned about civil liberties, writer Glenn Greenwald, cofounder of the Intercept, who built his career as a critic of government surveillance, told BuzzFeed News. But at the same time, I'm also much more receptive to proposals that in my entire life I never expected I would be, because of the gravity of the threat.

Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his reporting on the disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed a vast secret infrastructure of US government surveillance. But like others who have spent years raising concerns about government overreach, he now accepts the idea that surveilling people who have contracted the coronavirus could be better than harsher measures to save lives.

The kind of digital surveillance that I spent a lot of years even before Snowden, and then obviously, the two or three years during Snowden advocating against is now something I think could be warranted principally to stave off the more brute solutions that were used in China, Greenwald said.

Greenwald said he was still trying to understand how to balance his own views on privacy against the current unprecedented situation. We have to be very careful not to get into that impulse either where we say, Hey, because your actions affect the society collectively, we have the right now to restrict it in every single way. We're in this early stage where our survival instincts are guiding our thinking, and that can be really dangerous. And Im trying myself to calibrate that.

The kind of digital surveillance that I spent a lot of years advocating against is now something I think could be warranted principally to stave off the more brute solutions that were used in China.

And he is far from the only prominent civil libertarian and opponent of surveillance trying to calibrate their response as governments around the world are planning or have already implemented location-tracking programs to monitor coronavirus transmission, and have ordered wide-scale shutdowns closing businesses and keeping people indoors. Broad expansions of surveillance power that would have been unimaginable in February are being presented as fait accompli in March.

That has split an international community that would have otherwise been staunchly opposed to such measures. Is the coronavirus the kind of emergency that requires setting aside otherwise sacrosanct commitments to privacy and civil liberties? Or like the 9/11 attacks before it, does it mark a moment in which panicked Americans will accept new erosions on their freedoms, only to regret it when the immediate danger recedes?

Under these circumstances? Yeah, go for it, Facebook. You know, go for it, Google, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and 2016 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, told BuzzFeed News. But then, when the crisis goes away, how is that going to apply given that it's in place? I mean, these are the obvious questions, and no, that would not be a good thing.

"My fear is that, historically, in any moment of crisis, people who always want massive surveillance powers will finally have an avenue and an excuse to get them, Matthew Guariglia, an analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed News.

Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), told BuzzFeed News that its possible to find a solution that protects privacy and prevents the spread of the virus.

People like to say, 'well, we need to strike a balance between protecting public health and safeguarding privacy' but that is genuinely the wrong way to think about it, Rotenberg said. You really want both. And if you're not getting both, there's a problem with the policy proposal.

An aerial view from a drone shows an empty Interstate 280 leading into San Francisco, California, March 26.

Beyond the sick and dead, the most immediate effects that the pandemic has visited upon the United States have been broad constraints that state and local governments have imposed on day-to-day movement. Those are in keeping with public health experts recommendations to practice social distancing to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

While the US hasnt announced a nationwide stay-at-home order like France and Italy have, large parts of the US are under some degree of lockdown, with nonessential businesses shuttered and nonessential activities outside the home either banned or discouraged. And while President Trump and his allies have focused on the economic devastation wrought by this shutdown, some libertarians have raised concerns about the damage those decrees have done to people's freedoms.

Appearing on libertarian former Texas lawmaker and two-time Republican presidential candidate Ron Pauls YouTube show on March 19, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie pointed to a Kentucky man who, after testing positive for the coronavirus, refused to self-isolate, and whom sheriff's deputies forced to stay home. (Massie later came under bipartisan criticism for attempting to hold up the coronavirus stimulus bill in the House.)

What would they do if that man walked out and got in his car? Would they shoot him? Would they suit up in hazmat uniforms and drag him off? Massie said. Those are the images we saw in China two months ago and everybody was appalled at those images. And now were literally, we could be five minutes away from that happening in the United States, here in Kentucky.

Its crazy, and what concerns me the most is that once people start accepting that, in our own country, the fact that somebody could immobilize you without due process, that when this virus is over people will have a more paternalistic view of government and more tolerance for ignoring the Constitution, Massie said.

Last Monday, Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, announced that he had tested positive for the disease, only a few days after Ron Paul wrote in his online column that the pandemic could be a big hoax pushed by fearmongers to put more power in government hands.

But the elder Paul's concerns are not shared among some of his fellow former Libertarian Party nominees for president.

Johnson said measures to encourage people to stay in their homes and temporarily shutter businesses taken by states like New York were appropriate. I really have to believe that they're dealing with [this] in the best way that they possibly can, he told BuzzFeed News. And I think it's also telling that most of them are following the same route.

Johnson added that although it was easy to raise criticisms, as a former governor, he saw few other options.

You're just not hearing it: What are the alternatives? Johnson said. I don't know, not having [currently] sat at the table as governor, what the options were. And given that every state appears to be doing the same thing, I have to believe that everything is based on the best available information.

A security guard looks at tourists through his augmented reality eyewear equipped with an infrared temperature detector in Xixi Wetland Park in Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang province Tuesday, March 24. Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

A map application developed by The Baidu Inc. displays the locations visited by people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in Shanghai, China, on Friday, Feb. 21. Qilai Shen / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Gaming out the role of intense surveillance during a pandemic isnt just a theoretical political debate on YouTube. Surveillance at previously politically unimaginable scales has reached countries around the world.

Imagine opening an app, scanning a QR code, and creating a profile thats instantly linked with information about your health and where you've been. The app tells you if youve been in close contact with someone sick with the coronavirus.

This software already exists in China. Developed by the Electronics Technology Group Corporation and the Chinese government, it works by tapping into massive troves of data collected by the private sector and the Chinese government. In South Korea, the government is mapping the movements of COVID-19 patients using data from mobile carriers, credit card companies, and the Institute of Public Health and Environment. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's internal security agency to tap into a previously undisclosed cache of cellphone data to trace the movements of infected persons in that country and in the West Bank. And in the Indian state of Karnataka, the government is requiring people in lockdown to send it selfies every hour to prove they are staying home.

No such tools currently exist in the United States but some in the tech community who might have been expected to oppose such capacities have found themselves favoring these previously unthinkable steps.

Maciej Cegowski, the founder of Pinboard and a frequent critic of tech companies intrusions into privacy, wrote a blog post arguing for a massive surveillance program to fight the virus.

My frustration is that we have this giant surveillance network deployed and working," Cegowski told BuzzFeed News. "We have location tracking. We have people carrying tracking devices on them all the time. But were using it to sell skin cream you know, advertising. And were using it to try to persuade investors to put more money into companies. Since that exists and we have this crisis right now, lets put it to use to save lives.

We put up with the fire department breaking down our door if theres a fire at our neighbors house or in our house because we know that in normal times our houses are sacrosanct.

This position is a major departure for Ceglowski, who has warned of how tech companies have invaded our ambient privacy and argued that tech giants reach into our lives is as pernicious a force as government surveillance.

We put up with the fire department breaking down our door if theres a fire at our neighbors house or in our house because we know that in normal times our houses are sacrosanct, Cegowski said. I think similarly if we can have a sense that well have real privacy regulation, then in emergency situations like this we can decide, hey, were going to change some things.

Those doors are already being broken down. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network a collaboration between Facebook, Camber Systems, Cuebiq, and health researchers from 13 universities will use corporate location data from mobile devices to give local officials "consolidated daily situation reports" about "social distancing interventions."

Representatives from the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network did not respond to requests for comment.

A person watching live data reporting about the worldwide spread of the coronavirus.

Lots of companies claim that they have the technology to save peoples lives. But critics worry that they are taking advantage of a vulnerable time in American society to sign contracts that won't easily be backed out of when the threat passes.

Sometimes people have an almost sacrificial sense about their privacy, Rotenberg told BuzzFeed News. They say things like, Well, if it'll help save lives for me to disclose my data, of course, I should do that. But that's actually not the right way to solve a problem. Particularly if asking people to sacrifice their privacy is not part of an effective plan to save lives.

In response to the pandemic, some data analytics and facial recognition companies have offered new uses for existing services. Representatives from data analytics company have reportedly been working with the CDC on collecting and integrating data about COVID-19, while Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state agencies to track patients infected by the virus.

Neither Palantir nor Clearview AI responded to requests for comment, but the appearance of these controversial companies has raised alarms among those in the privacy community.

The deployment of face recognition, as a way of preventing the spread of virus, is something that does not pass the sniff test at all, Guariglia said. Even the companies themselves, I don't think, can put out a logical explanation as to how face recognition, especially Clearview, would help.

The leaders of other technology companies that design tools for law enforcement have tried to offer tools to combat COVID-19 as well. Banjo, which combines social media and satellite data with public information, like CCTV camera footage, 911 calls, and vehicle location, to detect criminal or suspicious activity, will be releasing a tool designed to respond to the outbreak.

We are working with our partners to finalize a new tool that would provide public health agencies and hospitals with HIPAA-compliant information that helps identify potential outbreaks and more efficiently apply resources to prevention and treatment, a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable.

Those efforts cause concerns for people like Evan Greer, the deputy director of digital rights activist group Fight for the Future, who told BuzzFeed News that such tools, once deployed, would inevitably be used for more purposes than to fight the pandemic.

We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable, she said. It's not necessarily a question of if data that was handed over to the government because of this crisis would be repurposed. It's a matter of when.

In addition to those companies, many camera makers have been making a bold claim: Using just an infrared sensor, they can detect fevers, helping venues filter out the sick from the healthy. These firms include Dahua Technology in Israel, Guide Infrared in China, Diycam in India, Rapid-Tech Equipment in Australia, and Athena Security in the US.

In late February, Guide Infrared announced that it had donated about $144,000 worth of equipment that could warn users when fever is detected to Japan. The company said its devices would be used in Japanese hospitals and epidemic prevention stations.

Although Guide Infrared claimed that its temperature measurement solutions have helped in emergencies including SARS, H1N1, and Ebola, the Chinese army and government authorities are some of its major customers, according to the South China Morning Post. Its been used in railway stations and airports in major Chinese regions. Its also partnered with Hikvision, a Chinese company blacklisted by the US over its work outfitting Chinese detention centers with surveillance cameras.

Australian company Rapid-Tech Equipment claims that its fever-detection cameras can be used in "minimizing the spread [of] coronavirus infections." Its cameras are being used in Algeria, France, Egypt, Greece, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many more countries, according to its website. UK camera maker Westminster International said that it has a "supply range of Fever Detection Systems for Coronavirus, Ebola & Flu."

US company Testo Thermal Imaging sells two cameras with a FeverDetection assistant. A section of its website titled Why fever detection? argues that managers of high-traffic venues have a responsibility to filter for fevers: Whether ebola, SARS or coronavirus: no-one wants to imagine the consequences of an epidemic or even a pandemic.

A Testo spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company has seen a massive increase in demand for its products in response to the coronavirus and that its cameras are being used worldwide. The spokesperson declined to provide specific examples or name specific countries.

While the appetite for fever-detecting cameras is clearly there, civil liberties advocates have concerns. Guariglia said that, regardless of their thermal imaging capabilities, surveillance cameras are surveillance cameras.

More surveillance cameras always have dubious implications for civil liberties. Even if their contract with thermal imaging ends at the end of six months, Guariglia said, I bet those cameras are gonna stay up.

A man wearing a protective mask walks under surveillance cameras in Shanghai.

Julian Sanchez, an analyst with the Cato Institute and commentator on digital surveillance and privacy issues, told BuzzFeed News he was willing to accept measures he might otherwise have concerns about to limit the spread of the virus.

Im about as staunch a privacy guy as it gets, Sanchez said. In the middle of an epidemic outbreak, there are a number of things Im willing to countenance that I would normally object to, on the premise that they are temporary and will save a lot of lives.

But he still questioned the efficacy of some of the current proposals: Theres a ton of snake oil being pitched by surveillance vendors, he said.

More than that, he had concerns about what would happen to civil liberties after the pandemic passed, but the measure put in place to combat it did not.

I think a lot of civil liberties advocates would say, Well, if this is very tightly restricted, and only for this purpose, and it's temporary, then, you know, maybe that's all right. Maybe were able to accept that, if were confident it's for this purpose, and then it ends, Sanchez said. The question is whether that's the case.

Sanchez worried that the coronavirus, like the war on terror, is an open-ended threat with no clear end inviting opportunities for those surveillance measures to be abused long after the threat has passed.

In the same week that he spoke, the US Senate voted to extend until June the FBI's expanded powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, originally passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks 19 years ago.

Mar. 30, 2020, at 21:57 PM

Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state governments. An earlier version of this story misstated the government agency it had reportedly been in contact with.

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The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Set Off A Massive Expansion Of Government Surveillance. Civil Libertarians Aren't Sure What To Do. - BuzzFeed News

On Sept. 11, 2001, the world woke up to not just a new day, but a new era. The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City led to developments that transformed the U.S. and the rest of the world.

A decade after the Cold War had ended and the Soviet Union crumbled, a new enemy emerged: terror. But, this enemy had no particular nation or army. Global powers deemed it insufficient to call the struggle against this enemy a military intervention. Instead, they chose the word war, as if there was a concrete target on the opposite side, leading to the conceptualization of war on terror."

Terror was an abstract enemy. It was hard to detect the perpetrator but even harder to eliminate it. This conceptual war was open to abuse, with no certain geography and no identified perpetrators who served it. For instance, the process that began with the invasion of Afghanistan was moved to Iraq on the false pretext that Baghdad was developing weapons of mass destruction. New combat techniques became common in this war on terror. The U.S. dropped bombs on nearly 10 countries, including Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia.

In 2016 alone, 2,617 bombs were dropped on eight countries. In fact, the era of Nobel Peace Laureate, liberal democrat Barack Obama has gone down in history as a bloody period in which 10 times more drone strikes were carried out than in the tenue of his predecessor, the neo-conservative George W. Bush. Currently, the U.S. has drone bases in 21 foreign countries.

The September 11 attacks also changed the relationship of American society with the government. Had it not been for 9/11, the majority of Americans would have seen the Patriot Act as an attack on civil rights and freedoms. However, it was brought into force with great approval. Other western democracies continued the same tradition. The idea that privacy is a right that should be protected by the state is no longer as popular as it once was. Although Edward Snowden showed what extremes this breach of privacy might have reached by risking his own freedom, the limit has now been violated and it is impossible to return.

Today we face another invisible enemy: COVID-19. Although doctors and other experts are at the forefront of the fight against this enemy, it is a fact that the global pandemic will transform both international relations and the social structure.

The lack of cohesion among the members of the European Union is evident from images of Russian tanks roaming the streets of Italy. China is offering support to 54 African and European countries, pushing its global PR campaign alongside. Once the pandemic is eliminated, the haze caused by it will go away and we will awaken to a new international order. It may also normalize some responses that were not common among us earlier.

For instance, many of us will now be more easily convinced to allow state intervention in our bodies in a bid to protect public health. We may also voluntarily participate in governments' bio-chip injection practices that can instantly detect a pathogenic virus entering our bodies and monitor our health. If there is any practice left in which Big Brother is not watching us, we, ourselves, will let him in.

Since it was revealed that the circulation of banknotes is one of the main factors in the spread of the virus, there has been a surge in the use of credit cards. Soon, electronic money like Bitcoin and digital currencies will gain further prominence. In short, the policies made in the name of security during the war on terror will now be followed by those made in the name of healthy living.

The year 2020 is not only forcing us into quarantine; it is also urging us to ponder the codes of the new world order.

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COVID-19: The worlds 9/11 - Daily Sabah