COVID-19 and the Acceleration of State Surveillance

by Muhammad Faizal Bin Abdul Rahman

CENS / Op-Eds

14 MAY 2020

If the 15th-century philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli were alive today, he would surely have recognised the power of surveillance technologies that states such as China, Singapore, South Korea, and others have adopted in the fight against Covid-19. Patrol robots and drones, CCTV cameras and smartphone applications, all supporting facial recognition, location tracking, and big-data analytics for contact tracing and social control (including law enforcement). These things may be tools for protection, but they are also instruments of fear.

In the effort to persuade people to comply with counter-pandemic measures, fear of state punishment has perhaps played a greater role than fear of the loss of privacy and civil liberties. But people are also fearful of sacrificing privacy and civil liberties as a result of tech-enabled mass surveillance expanding state power. 

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Citation:
Muhammad Faizal Bin Abdul Rahman, “COVID-19 and the Acceleration of State Surveillance”, Lowy Interpreter, 14 May 2020