Libya’s minister escapes assassination attempt
The powerful interior minister of Libya’s unity government survived an assassination attempt on Sunday on a highway near the capital Tripoli, an official from his inner circle said.
Fathi Bashagha’s convoy “was fired on from an armoured car while he was on the highway. His police escort returned fire. Two of the assailants were arrested and a third is in hospital,” the source said, adding that “the minister is fine”.
Bashagha, a heavyweight in
People returning to work following the long pandemic will find an array of tech-infused gadgetry to improve workplace safety but which could pose risks for long-term personal and medical privacy.
Temperature checks, distance monitors, digital “passports’’, wellness surveys and robotic cleaning and disinfection systems are being deployed in many workplaces seeking to reopen.
Tech giants and start-ups are offering solutions which include computer vision detection of vital signs to wearables which can offer early indications of the onset of Covid-19 and apps that keep track of health metrics.
Salesforce and IBM have partnered on a “digital health pass” to let people share their vaccination and health status on their smartphone.
Clear, a tech start-up known for airport screening, has created its own health pass which is being used by organisations such as the National Hockey League and MGM Resorts.
Fitbit, the wearable tech maker recently acquired by Google, has its own “Ready for Work” program that includes daily check-ins using data from its devices.
Microsoft and insurance giant United Healthcare have deployed a Protectwell app which includes a daily symptom screener, and Amazon has deployed a “distance assistant” in its warehouses to help employees maintain safe distances.
And a large coalition of technology firms and health organisations are working on a digital vaccination certificate, which can be used on smartphones to show evidence of inoculation for Covid-19. With these systems, employees may face screenings even as they enter a building lobby, and monitoring in elevators, hallways and throughout the workplace.
The monitoring “blurs the line between people’s workplace and personal lives’’, said Darrell West, a Brookings Institution Vice President with the think-tank’s Center for Technology Innovation.
A report last year by the consumer activist group Public Citizen identified at least 50 apps and technologies released during the pandemic “marketed as workplace surveillance tools to combat Covid-19.”
The report said some systems go so far as identifying people who may not spend enough time in front of a sink to note inadequate handwashing.
For some companies their business model involves gathering data and using it for some monetisable purpose and that poses a risk to privacy
FORREST BRISCOE Penn State University