Page 129 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

victims of new surveillance powers that will never recede and that
could be repurposed as a political means for more sinister ends.

As the last few pages have exposed beyond a reasonable
doubt, the pandemic could open an era of active health
surveillance made possible by location-detecting smartphones,
facial-recognition cameras and other technologies that identify
sources of infection and track the spread of a disease in quasi real

time.

Despite all the precautions certain countries take to control the
power of tech and limit surveillance (others are not so concerned),
some thinkers worry about how some of the quick choices we

make today will influence our societies for years to come. The
historian Yuval Noah Harari is one of them. In a recent article, he
argues that we’ll have a fundamental choice to make between
totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. It’s worth

exposing his argument in detail:

Surveillance technology is developing at breakneck
speed, and what seemed science-fiction 10 years ago is
today old news. As a thought experiment, consider a

hypothetical government that demands that every citizen
wears a biometric bracelet that monitors body temperature
and heart-rate 24 hours a day. The resulting data is hoarded
and analysed by government algorithms. The algorithms will
know that you are sick even before you know it, and they will

also know where you have been, and who you have met. The
chains of infection could be drastically shortened, and even
cut altogether. Such a system could arguably stop the

epidemic in its tracks within days. Sounds wonderful, right?
The downside is, of course, that this would give legitimacy to
a terrifying new surveillance system. If you know, for
example, that I clicked on a Fox News link rather than a CNN
link, that can teach you something about my political views

and perhaps even my personality. But if you can monitor what
happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heart-
rate as I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me

laugh, what makes me cry, and what makes me really, really

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