Md Jonaed Tushan :
But, No governments can afford this shattered situation for long time no matter how stable their economy is. So, they had come out with diverse approaches like mass surveillance. Unfortunately, mass surveillance isn’t the hardest job to do in this era of technology and super computer.
The human race is going to achieve Type-1 civilization in the parameter of Kardashev scale in a very short time. It shows how fast we are improving in technology. So, tracking down an infected person by harvesting his/her data is way easier than you think.
For instance, there are already plenty of cameras installed in public places, smartphone apps being launched, drones are being used. So, they can track your every movement and your health conditions.
Chinese government is trying to build the sturdiest surveillance system in the world by using facial recognition cameras in the public places and mobile phone apps. Cameras are pretty much everywhere there. One for roughly 8 people. And countries like South Korea came out with bracelet technology to track pulse and heartbeat. Which means, they know you’re sick or not before you do.
There is no doubt technology is playing a bludgeoning part in the fight against this epidemic. It’s already proved profoundly helpful to the authorities. Unfortunately, this is at the cost of our personal data which falls into unregulated territory concerning what the government and corporations can use this data for.
Technology companies are collaborating with governments in order to launch apps that can track your contacts, mapping your body temperature and your facial expressions. Drones and CCTV cameras are being used for almost same purpose. Some countries required for the people who violated the rules of quarantine to wear a smart bracelet. Even Bangladesh is launching an app soon in order to trace the contacts of Covid-19 infected.
The scariest part is, most people don’t even know how they are being tracked. It’s like someone is always watching you everywhere. They could know wherever you are going, meeting, even what you are thinking. An algorithm is always processing your anthologized data and giving the feedback to the authority like the “Thought police” in the dystopian fiction ‘1984’, which is a famous novel written by “George Orwell” back in 1949 after the world war II where the inflatable government of Big Brother monitors people of his country everywhere and every second so that he can run the country without any skirmish. This pandemic driving the humankind towards that fiction or we can say fiction is becoming reality. It seems a “Big Brother Is Watching You”.
Actually, people are in the false dichotomy in between healthcare and privacy. Obviously, most of us would give the healthcare priority over privacy. Even the people of Germany, most privacy conscious nation is considering a mobile phone app that would trace the contacts of anyone infected coronavirus. After 9/11 people of USA compromised their privacy over the state security. It seems people are less concern about their privacy while fear of death is around.
We are being relaxed with our privacy for the pandemic, aren’t we? Or should we be serious about the danger of someone is trampling over our privacy using the excuse of emergency?
Mostly people ask a common question when this type of conversation take places. ‘What can they do with my information?’ – in a neglecting way. The answer is lot more complicated than ‘yes or no’. If someone knows you better than you, than he/she can easily manipulates your thought process.
For example, the most popular social media in the world Facebook helped to win Donald Trump in US election by just showing appropriate ads to their people. Cambridge Analytica used more than 50 million Facebook users’ data that contains personal interests, friends, and E-mails to help win trump, which has been gathered from Facebook back in 2014.
Maybe someday this pandemic will be over. Someday people would go out dine with their loved ones, even will attend in the biggest concert on earth but how could they be so sure that someone’s not watching them? There is no Big Brother anymore?
We may never know!
(Md Jonaed Tushan is a writer).
