Digital panopticon
Opportunistic tracking tech threatens public trust
The proliferation and normalization of intrusive technologies such as in-home listening devices, cameras and trackers, all sold as consumer electronics, was growing apace before the COVID-19 pandemic. But, in this time of unprecedented hardship, fear and uncertainty, surveillance firms are hoping to seize the opportunity and erode privacy even further.
AiRISTA Flow, based in Maryland, and Redpoint Positioning Corp., based in Boston, are both marketing products that allow companies to track “assets” — inanimate objects or people. Using tags or even wearable products like a bracelet, AiRISTA Flow and Redpoint claim their products are effective tools for contact tracing, allowing an office to track the potential spread of a virus.
But the potential for abuse is high, as employers could track employees wherever they go and see who they interact with and when. Employees are used to being observed at work, but being placed in a digital panopticon, with every move being recorded in real time, is a dangerous escalation that could have dangerous psychological effects.
Outside of the workplace, Israeli surveillance company SuperCom is now pushing a tracking bracelet technology it developed for tracking incarcerated people as a tool in the fight against COVID-19. The differences are slight. A tool for house arrests is now a tool for quarantine enforcement. The company has told media outlets that its product has elicited interest from a number of world governments, and that it will be up to SuperCom’s customers to set their own rules regarding privacy.
This approach has concerned public health officials and privacy advocates alike. In an interview with The Intercept, Leonard Rubenstein, a human rights attorney and bioethicist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, described SuperCom’s “ankle monitor and other tracking methods ... highly inappropriate and detrimental to a public health response in being unreasonably and unnecessarily coercive.”
He added that the company’s technology represented “a serious invasion of privacy without any safeguards, and promoting an adversarial relationship to public health authorities when the relationship should be built on trust.”
Trust is critical in times of crisis. Contact tracing programs initiated by public health officials, social distancing, stay-at-home orders — all require public trust and cooperation. But policies and technologies that overreach and represent long-term dangers to people’s privacy shake that trust. Combating COVID-19 has required an enormous effort; combating the COVID-19 opportunists may be just as difficult.