Coronavirus, Surveillance Capitalism and Citizen Tracking Legislation

This week, Slovakia passed a new law through Parliament which allows for telecom companies, and subsequently the Public Health Office, to track the location of Coronavirus patients in order to ensure that they are remaining isolated and complying with the imposed quarantine. 

However, Slovakia is not the first country to imply such drastic measures. A multitude of other governments passed such legislation in places such as South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. The justification behind this unwarranted civilian surveillance is that it has proven effective in slowing the spread of the virus by instigating inescapable quarantine conditions, which if broken, would result in a heavy fine. 

This, however, has raised concerns with citizens. Firstly, the existence of such technology on such short notice can imply this has been possible for a while now. Secondly, if the government and these telecom companies have the means to track citizen movement during this epidemic, how are we to know that they haven’t already been doing so? This all feeds into the wider debate on surveillance and user privacy in technology.

Despite the inevitable public outrage at this infringement of citizen data, Slovakia’s justice minister, Maria Kolikova, acknowledged that, in the face of such an epidemic, the right to privacy was not obsolete. She commented that “If the protection of health and life is at stake, legislation like this is appropriate” and assured the public that this data is only accessible to the Public Health Office. 

Furthermore, other countries like the Czech Republic are planning to launch “smart quarantine systems” in April which will monitor citizens. These systems, however, will require that the user first agrees to a set of terms as consent to this type of monitoring. Poland has also said that they will introduce “electronic solutions” to ensure that citizens are really staying in quarantine. 

Unfortunately, now that this legislation has become public for countries like Slovakia, it is questionable that it will have the desired effects. Citizens, knowing they are being monitored, can simply leave their phones at home when going out. During this time of uncertainty, citizens are required to put their trust entirely in their governments. Tomas Krissak, an analyst at the Open Society Foundation, has commented that he believes there is no evil intention behind this legislation, at least not one which will turn these governments into 2013 NSA overnight, but it is simply for the safety of vulnerable groups within society. 

This type of legislation is only the beginning of technological surveillance in society which, if instigating desired results for governments, could potentially be adopted on a wider scale even after this epidemic has subsided. 

by Ellie Nikolova

The Corporate Law JournalComment