Krise To Go # 6

During the first lockdown, European states imposed surveillance measures on the population that before the corona pandemic would have been considered critical attributes of a surveillance state. In Belgium, drones were deployed to help enforce COVID-19 measures and occasionally give orders. For both governments and private companies, the pandemic seems to be a welcome testbed for such new features of policing and surveillance. License plate scanners, video surveillance, voice and face recognition, biometric images and fingerprints on passports are just a few technologies that are being implemented, or are on their way of implementation in various states and different private or public contexts. Chinese president Xi Jinping recently proposed a QR code based global travel system, and initiatives by (Western) corporations and the World Economic Forum like ID2020 and The Known Traveler Digital Identity (KTDI) are advocating for a similar system.
The European Commission is developing a new platform called “Roxanne”, to improve investigative capabilities of police authorities, in particular in major criminal cases. “Roxanne“ identifies potential suspects though a combination of voice recognition and other data left behind by individuals on platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

While the public debate is strongly focusing on COVID-19, other political issues receive less attention, and governments can perhaps count on less social resistance to implementing new security measures – as it is more difficult to organize protest to voice public opposition. The German government seems to use the current “distraction of the public” as an opportunity to pass new legislations: In late October, it allowed all 19 secret services to record communications from encrypted messenger services in the future. Cloud services, voice assistants and smart devices will be included.