Advanced Search
Content Type: Examples
As part of Mexico City's March 31 lockdown, which shut all shops except those relating to health, food, and essential services, telephone companies will provide access to cell phone antennas to enable the Digital Agency of Public Innovation to monitor movement and personal contact. The information will be aggregated by antenna and anonymised for analysis.
Source: https://cdmx.gob.mx/portal/articulo/cierre-de-centros-comerciales-por-emergencia-sanitaria
Writer: Mexico City government…
Content Type: Examples
North Macedonia is the first country in the Western Balkans to launch a contact-tracing app. The government has stressed that the Bluetooth-based app, StopKorona!, complies with all legal privacy requirements. The app follows a decentralised design, so that users maintain full control over their data, which is deleted after 14 days; if they test positive for the virus they can choose to send their location history to the Ministry of Health so that their contacts can be alerted. The app was…
Content Type: Examples
India's COVID-19 tracker app, Aarogya Setu, was downloaded 50 million times in the first 13 days it was available. Developed by the National Informatics Centre a subsidiary of the Ministry of Electronics and IT, the app is available on both Android and iOS smartphones, and uses GPS and Bluetooth to provide information on whether the phone has been near an infected person. Users provide a mobile number, health status, and other credentials, and must keep both location services and Bluetooth…
Content Type: Examples
Montreal police have launched an online system to enable residents to report suspicious activity such as group gatherings after police officers noticed significant crowding in certain areas of the city. Both the Montreal police and the province's Sureté du Québec can hand out an on-the-spot $1,000 ticket for both indoor and outdoor illegal gatherings. Travellers returning to Canada who refuse to comply with self-isolation requirements can be fined up to $200,000 and up to six months in prison.…
Content Type: Examples
Since the Azarebaijani government imposed the lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19 the authorities have sentenced at least six activists and a pro-opposition journalist to detention for between ten and 30 days on charges including breaking lockdown rules or disobeying police orders. Almost all of those arrested had criticised the conditions in government-run quarantine centres or the insufficient compensation the government has provided to people struggling financially due to the…
Content Type: Examples
On April 5, Azerbaijan tightened the quarantine regime imposed on March 24 to require residents under 65 to receive permission via an SMS message before leaving their homes. Only three reasons are allowed: to visit the doctor, to visit a pharmacy, shop, bank, or post office, or attend a relative's funeral. Sending the message is free; it must include the resident's personal ID number and their reason for leaving the house. Permits grant a two-hour window, and residents can only have one per day…
Content Type: Examples
The Australian government's planned contact tracing app will reportedly be based on Singapore's TraceTogether, which relies on Bluetooth connections to detect other phones in range and log the results, so that if a phone user tests positive for COVID-19 and consents their close contacts can be alerted by uploading the logs to a centralised server. A second app, ConTrace, is in development for the Public Transport Information and Priority System; the prototype requires no personal information…
Content Type: Examples
New versions of drones that currently issue audio warnings reminding people in Elizabeth, New Jersey to observe social distancing guidelines will incorporate sensors and fever-detecting cameras that will monitor if people are sick or failing to social distance on the trails and in the parks of Meriden, Connecticut, according to the commercial drone company Draganfly, which claims the cameras can also detect sneezing and heart and respiratory rates. The company expects to conduct pilot…
Content Type: Examples
In early April, police in a UK park violated their own social distancing guidelines to order ITN journalist Michael Segalov to go home when he began filming the same police appearing to harass a distressed woman. Segalov's solicitors at ITN followed up by filing a letter of complaint demanding an investigation and a public apology.
Source: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/epgegj/police-power-trip-coronavirus-lockdown
Writer: Simon Childs
Publication: Vice
Content Type: Examples
The Venezuelan government has ramped up quarantine enforcement in the Catia barrio in Caracas by issuing permits that allow only one family member out at a time and only before noon, and setting up 40 checkpoints. Many residents had flouted regulations in the barrio, home to 400,000 of Venezuela's poorest inhabitants; residents reported that many families had spent weeks without running water and without receiving government handouts of food.
https://in.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus…
Content Type: Examples
Because many people were still circulating on the streets despite the lockdown order issued on March 25, Panama expanded its social distancing measures by implementing gender-based quarantine schedules from April 1 to April 12: men may leave their homes to get necessities on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while women may leave on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. No one is allowed out on Sundays or between 5pm and 5am on any day. In the week before the new order was issued, more than 2,000…
Content Type: Examples
Palantir and the British AI start-up Faculty are data-mining large volumes of confidential UK patient information to consolidate government databases and build predictive computer models under contract to NHSx, the digital transformation arm of the UK's National Health Service. NHSx said the goal is to give ministers and officials real-time information to show where demand is rising and equipment needs to be deployed, and that the companies involved do not control the data and are not allowed…
Content Type: Examples
A BBC article captures the story of a student living in Taiwan under quarantine, who reports that when his battery on his phone ran out, within an hour four different local administrative units contacted him; and a patrol was dispatched to verify his location; and a text was sent that the government had lost track of him and warned him of potential arrest for breaking quarantine.
According to the BBC report, Taiwan uses mobile signals to triangulate location of people under quarantine (…
Content Type: Long Read
On 15th April Margaret Atwood, author of the Handmaid's Tale, gave an interview to BBC Radio 5 Live where she commented that ‘people may be making arrangements that aren’t too pleasant, but it’s not a deliberate totalitarianism’. You can read more about the interview in the Guardian.
While we agree with Margaret Atwood that we are not necessarily entering an era of "deliberate totalitarianism" we have written the following open letter (download link at the bottom of the page) to her as a ‘…
Content Type: Examples
Oura Rings, which measure body temperature and blood pulse volume to determine heart and respiratory rate and track sleep, are the subject of a national study being jointly conducted by the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, WVU Medicine, and Oura Health in hopes it can be used to predict infection and identify infected health workers before they become symptomatic. The rings and their accompanying smartphone app have been issued to physicians, nurses, and other…
Content Type: Examples
The Department of Health in the US state of Kansas is tracking residents' locations via a platform called Unacast, which compares aggregated GPS mobile phone data from before and after the implementation of social distancing and grades each county on its compliance. As of April 1, 45 of 105 Kansas counties had received an F rating, and the state as a whole had managed a C. Unacast says the data it has access to is updated every other day and publishes updated ratings on all 50 US states.…
Content Type: Examples
The city of Moscow is planning to use smartphone geolocation functions to track foreign tourists' movements through the city to prevent outbreaks of COVID-19 after Russia reopens its borders. Moscow accounts for two-thirds of all cases in the country. Moscow City Hall is considering a system that would provide daily updates on tourists' movements using their SIM card data and show when residents come into contact with them; it is already buying location data from Russia's three biggest telecom…
Content Type: Examples
On April 2 Peruvian president Martín Vizcarra issued a controversial rule that men and women must observe quarantine on different days: men may leave their homes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while women may leave only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. No one is allowed out on Sundays. Some critics are concerned that the plan will lead to disproportionate harassment of LGBTQ+ people because the police are instructed to stop people based on gender presentation. The purpose, the…
Content Type: Examples
An Excel file containing complete data pertaining to patients tested for coronavirus in the cities Quetta and Taftan in the the Balochistan region of Pakistan has been circulating in WhatsApp groups about Balochistan. The file contains information such as names, phone numbers, age address and other identifying information for the patients. The leaked data puts the patients at risk of personal harm and social stigma, even after recovery. Balochistan government officials say the data leaked…
Content Type: Examples
The Norwegian contact tracing app, Infection Stop, relies on a centralised database to store users' GPS locations for 30 days, like its Chinese counterpart. Sumula, the company that developed the app, claims is necessary because of technical limitations in Apple's smartphone operating system iOS. Simula has rejected using Bluetooth, like Singapore's TraceTogether, because to work on Apple's iPhones the tracker app would have to be in the forefront in order to be able to use Bluetooth to send,…
Content Type: Examples
In order to enforce mandatory 14-day quarantine orders, Kenyan authorities have been tracking mobile phones of people suspected to have COVID-19. Also in Kenya, police enforcement efforts have led to several deaths: three died of injuries from being beaten, one, a 13-year-old boy, was hit by a bullet.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52214740
Writer: Dickens Olewe
Publication: BBC News
Content Type: Examples
The Kazakhstani ministry of health requires the 8,000 or so Kazakhstani citizens currently under quarantine to use the SmartAstana tracking app, which enables officials to ensure that they remain in isolation. By contrast, for the city of Almaty the ministry of the interior relies on video surveillance technology called Sergek, produced by the local telecommunications firm Korkem Telecom to find people who break quarantine . So far, these two cases are the only examples of the government…
Content Type: Examples
The Guatemalan government is using the app Alerta Guate to spread public health information, which was created by the Chicago-registered company In-telligent LLC. The app is allowed to collect each user's email address, social media account handles, age, personal interests, and geographic location, and asks permission to access files, calls, and audio, among others. The president has said he wants to ensure that citizens keep the app installed so it can be used later for other purposes such as…
Content Type: Examples
Germany's federal agency responsible for disease control and prevention, the Robert Koch Institute, has teamed up with the health technology start-up Thryve to develop an app called Corona-Datenspende ("data donation") that works with a variety of smartwatches and fitness wristbands. The app is designed to use the device's sensors to collect user data, and includes algorithms to it to spot symptoms linked to COVID-19 and help predict the spread and containment of the virus. More than 50,000…
Content Type: Examples
Anyone in Egypt who suspects they or others have COVID-19 is required to immediately report it to the authorities in order to stop the spread of the virus and enable treatment. On April 1 Ahmed Refaat, a member of the parliamentary Telecommunications Committee, submitted a proposal for creating an app that would track these cases and allow them to receive a test result without having to return to the testing centre. The proposed app would also provide daily updates on the virus's spread and the…
Content Type: Examples
The Guangzhou Public Transportation Group has installed a biometric tablet next to bus drivers' seats so they can check the temperature and identity of every passenger who boards. The tablets will also photograph each passenger, allowing them to be identified by China's facial recognition network in the hope of helping control the spread of the novel coronavirus by enabling contact tracing for anyone displaying symptoms. The Group claims the data so gathered will only be used in the interests…
Content Type: Examples
As part of its new state of emergency law, Cambodia's national assembly has granted the country's leader, Hun Sen, new powers to surveille telecommunications, control the press and social media, restrict freedom of movement and of assembly, seize private property, and enforce quarantine orders, as well as enact other measures "deemed appropriate and necessary". Amnesty International called the legislation indefensible and a concentration of unchecked power.
Source: https://www.…
Content Type: Examples
The Bangladeshi start-up Sigmind.ai has developed the WATCHCAM Mass Surveillance System, which it claims can recognise individuals even when they're wearing a mask with 87.3% accuracy - and 99.4% if they're not wearing a mask. The company began developing the system in 2019 to provide ATM security, but it now marketing it for contact tracing, help track down infected people, and enforce quarantine.
Source: https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2020/04/07/bangladeshi-developers-devise-a…
Content Type: Examples
On request, Vodafone Australia, which has 6 million subscribers nationwide, handed the mobile phone location data of several million Australians to the federal and New South Wales governments to help them monitor whether people are following the social distancing restrictions. The governments, medical experts, and media had previously used the data collected by transport apps such as CityMapper, but the number who use that one app is necessarily limited. Vodafone claimed the data was anonymised…
Content Type: Examples
The Afghan Ministry of Public Health and Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology have launched the "corona.asan.gov.af" software to provide health advice in three English, Dari, and Pashto; using the questions embedded in the software users can evaluate themselves for the virus.
Source: https://tolonews.com/afghanistan/afghan-ministries-launch-coronavirus-tracking-app
Writer: TOLOnews
Publication: TOLOnews