intense lobbying of governments by technology companies, their already-existing technocratic practices and their desire to stimulate high-tech innovation.16 This was already visible in the rush to find “solutions” after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington known as “9/11,” when companies hastily used their home pages to offer simultaneous condolences to bereaved families and advertisements for their “anti-terrorism” products. And governments acceded, using techniques ranging from biometric tests to Artificial Intelligence to trace and impede terrorism.17
The same kind of response follows in other similar situations. It also happened, for instance, following the terrorist attacks on Mumbai – centring on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and the Railway Terminus – in 2008. Very quickly, both maritime security and hotel security – scanners, maritime identification systems, biometric IDs for fishermen – were enhanced with new surveillance measures, and new National Security Guard (NSG) units were deployed in major cities. These were “required” because the attack was mounted from the ocean, and due to delays with the NSG, which at the time was based only near New Delhi.18 Today, in a global pandemic, such solutionism has a seductively powerful pull.
Why the haste to set up government security agencies and massive surveillance arsenals? Part of the answer is that citizens rightly demand adequate responses to emergencies and crises, by government. But Naomi Klein notes that another factor kicks in – the “shock doctrine.”19 She shows how governments frequently take advantage of both “natural” disasters and human conflicts to bring about major changes that consolidate their power. Klein now speaks of a “pandemic shock doctrine,” clearly visible in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s vision for a new New York, with Google and Microsoft “permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life.”20 Surveillance capitalism rides again.
Now, the point is emphatically not that high-tech products have no place in pandemic responses. It is, rather, that any such responses deserve to be checked for their fitness-for-purpose and their compliance with other priorities than health, such as privacy and civil liberties. Each digital offering has strict limits on what it can achieve, and each brings with it challenges as well as benefits to human life. Beyond this, it should also be acknowledged that such products are unlikely to solve pandemic problems. Rather, they are potential contributions to a tool-box of practices that, it is hoped, will mitigate some effects of the pandemic.
“Solutions” are considered in relation to dealing with causes more properly than merely with symptoms. As the “cause” of the COVID-19 pandemic is as yet unknown, dealing with that is more than moot. However, one of the likely contributory factors relates to the fact that COVID-19, like many contemporary diseases, is zoonotic. That is, the virus jumps from animals to humans, as seems to have occurred in Wuhan. A 2020 UN conference on loss of biodiversity hinted strongly that the COVID-19 virus may be linked with – perhaps accelerated by – species depletion, itself related to, among other things, deforestation.21 It is systemic. In contrast with the rapid rollout of new platforms, devices and apps, dealing with species depletion is a long-term, massive, planetary project. One might also continue the comparison with 9/11, in that the high-tech “solutions” introduced for national security purposes also ignored the deeper problems of the cause of terrorism in 2001.
The burden of this book
The burden of this book is that COVID-generated tech solutionism is creating digital infrastructures that tend to downplay negative effects on human life and are likely to persist into the post-pandemic world, endangering human rights and data justice. Many of the proposals and products that have circulated since early in 2020 are highly surveillant. That is, they depend on data that makes people visible in particular ways, representing them to other agents and agencies in those ways, so that those people can be treated accordingly.22
This is why “pandemic” and “surveillance” belong together. Indeed, the drive behind tech-solutionism suggests that at least two meanings may be given to “pandemic surveillance.” One is the obvious existence of a range of surveillance initiatives prompted by the pandemic that invite critical investigation. The other is that these forms of surveillance have grown and mutated so rapidly that their spread might be thought of as “viral.” In other words, there is a pandemic of surveillance.
Let me add a note about how we interpret and explain what is happening in the world of pandemic surveillance. Several perspectives are already evident in what has been said so far. One has to do with the connections between the human and the non-human world – I am thinking of the movement of the virus from animals to humans, in particular – that have such obvious relevance to the outcomes of the pandemic in general, and pandemic surveillance in particular. Another relates to the political economy of pandemic surveillance, in which corporations as well as government play a vital role in what sorts of surveillance occur, who benefits and who is negatively affected. The role of surveillance capitalism should not be underestimated.23
A third is what might be called a “biopolitical” perspective that emphasizes the ambiguity of power in pandemic surveillance. The power involved may be quite repressive, but it is also productive. Pandemic surveillance may lead to life-and-death decisions – who is “disposable?” asks Achille Mbembe.24 But one cannot necessarily tell in advance what sorts of effects will be produced. Then a fourth perspective is “socio-technical,” which looks particularly at the interplay between social and technical factors – especially the socially significant ways in which algorithms are produced, and also how they in turn have impacts on social situations.25
In what follows, I introduce some key themes of pandemic surveillance, chapter by chapter. I should say that, while I am convinced that what follows is a vital exercise – and I have learned a lot from my research – I also stress that what I have done is based very much on secondary sources, and on talking with those with expertise, as well as from personal participation in and observation of the pandemic. The pandemic is ongoing and some of its features, and responses to them, change over time. Nothing is fixed or solid.
I should also note that I write as someone who is a salaried white male, living in a city that has, to date, mainly been but lightly brushed – not brutally bombarded – by the pandemic. I acknowledge that this is a position of privilege and that I write having no first-hand personal experience of the desperate circumstances of many millions, worldwide, especially the colonized, racialized, the oppressed and the neglected. Talking and emailing with colleagues and friends in Australia, Brazil, China, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Israel/Palestine, Singapore, as well as closer to home in Canada and Europe, has given me some feel for others’ realities.
Road-map to Pandemic Surveillance
“Disease-Driven Surveillance,” chapter 2, takes us straight to what many think of as the heart of the issue: “contact tracing.” While we do look carefully at such digital location tracking systems, set up to aid contact tracing, other apps, wearable devices and data systems have been used in the pandemic. For instance, vaccine passports – they go under various names – are being rolled out to enable access and travel for those who have received appropriate doses of one of the available vaccines. And then there are wearables, from electronic bracelets to an array of small devices such as Fitbits and Apple watches for checking body temperature and other data such as daily steps and sleeptime, that can detect pre-symptomatic cases of COVID-19.26
Then, much less visible but highly significant kinds of digital surveillance – health data networks – have been built for modeling what is happening within a given jurisdiction, so that trends may be mapped and resources targeted appropriately. These use massive databases, some set up for the purpose, for crunching numbers to track and monitor the spread of the virus and to predict its
