Conscripting surveillance capitalism to fight COVID-19
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For many years now I have been a huge, huge fan of Polish-American
"computer guy" Maciej Cegłowski.  His website Idle Words (the subtitle
"brevity is for the weak" will make it clear to readers of this phlog
why I think of Maciej as a kindred spirit) has informed and
entertained me greatly through both its collection of talk notes[1] on
simplicity and privacy in tech (which are both insightful and quite
funny - I find it terribly refreshing to see somebody write so plainly
and frankly about the obvious huge problems that the industry
generally turns a blind eye to) and blog posts[2] on all manner of
things.  I especially recommend his talk "The Website Obesity
Crisis"[3], which was a strong and direct influence on my decision to
write the shizaru webserver[4].

Maciej is a huge opponent of so-called "survellance capitalism" - and
not just (despite the site name!) a spewer of idle words like me, this
guy has testified before the US senate in favour of regulating
behavioral data collection in the United States.  He's been
consistently opposed to ubiquitous tracking, in cyberspace and
meatspace, for as long as I've been aware of his existence.  I am
quite used to agreeing with pretty much anything he ever says.  So his
most recent blog post has proven incredibly challenging for me to
process, because I know - really believe - that the idea in it is
coming from the most unlikely source possible, and must have been born
through a lot of sincere reluctance and careful thought.

Entitled "We Need A Massive Surveillance Program"[5], the post lays
out the case that many lives could be saved in the efforts to contain
the spread of COVID-19 in the US if the government effectively
"conscripted" all the American companies whose literal job it is to
constantly record the physical location of as many people in the
country as possible as accurately as possible, for the purposes of
trying to sell them things like skin cream.  If somebody tests
positive for the virus, and they own an Android phone, it's highly
probable that Google knows everywhere they went during the incubation
period when they were contagious, and not only that but Google knows a
very large proportion of the other people who were in those same
places at the same time, and have the means to conveniently notify
them all to get tested or to isolate themselves.  This kind of
tracing and targetted testing enables rapid-response containment which
can be invaluable in limiting the spread of disease while enabling
known healthy people to return to work in known safe locations as
quickly as possible to help sustain/restart the economy.

Maciej says quite plainly that this project "requires terrifying
surveillance infrastructure", which he believes is "incompatible in
the long term with liberty".  I don't doubt that he would never
advocate building it for this specific purpose if it didn't exist.
But, he points out, it already *does* exist and is currently being
used, today, to sell skin cream.  If it's already there, already
doing all its evil, why not use it to save lives at the same time?

Doing this would require passing a bunch of laws to remove various
data sharing restrictions which would currently prevent this - Maciej
argues that that this could be used as "an opportunity to lay a
foundation for the world we want to live in after the crisis is over",
that the same laws which give the government the limited right to do
things like this in emergency situations should be written to
simultaneously restrict the rights of companies to use the same tools
for bread-and-butter businesses in non-emergency situations.

I dunno.  I understand the arguments.  I don't doubt that it could be
effective.  I genuinely believe Maciej's claim that he is "typing
this through gritted teeth".  I *don't* want to go on record as saying
I think it's better that millions more people die than that this is
done.  But I dunno.  Even if you *could* get those kind of laws
passed, I just can't realistically see a move like this as ultimately
being anything other than the death-knell of the anti-surveillance
movement.  If this plan was enacted, and it worked well, I think it
would guarantee that the surveillance infrastructure it relied on,
which should never have been built in the first place, would never,
ever be disassembled.  On the contrary, if it worked well, that
machinery would come to be viewed in a positive light, and it would be
thought of as critical infrastructure, and actively maintained.
Non-US governments would proceed to to build their own versions of
this Silicon Valley machinery, perhaps licensing technology from
private American companies.  Anybody who opposed these plans would be
accused of being cold-hearted and irresponsible and wanting future
pandemics to have death tolls no lower than this one.  It would be an
even worse enabler of government surveillance than terrorism has
been.  COVID-19 has surely already killed more people than the last
century's worth of terrorism, and nobody will argue that the risk of
future pandemics would be better addressed through changes in US
foreign policy or energy dependence.

Of course, all of this analysis presupposes some kind of eventual
return to normalcy anyway.  Certainly this is not impossible, but I'm
also far from convinced that it's inevitable...

[1] https://idlewords.com/talks/
[2] https://idlewords.com/
[3] https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
[4] https://tildegit.org/solderpunk/shizaru/
[5] https://idlewords.com/2020/03/we_need_a_massive_surveillance_program.htm