COVID-19—Extending Surveillance and the Panopticon

Abstract

Surveillance is a core function of all public health systems. Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have deployed traditional public health surveillance responses, such as contact tracing and quarantine, and extended these responses with the use of varied technologies, such as the use of smartphone location data, data networks, ankle bracelets, drones, and big data analysis. Applying Foucault's (1979) notion of the panopticon, with its twin focus on surveillance and self-regulation, as the preeminent form of social control in modern societies, we examine the increasing levels of surveillance enacted during this pandemic and how people have participated in, and extended, this surveillance, self-regulation, and social control through the use of digital media. Consideration is given to how such surveillance may serve public health needs and/or political interests and whether the rapid deployment of these extensive surveillance mechanisms risks normalizing these measures so that they become more acceptable and then entrenched post-COVID-19.

Governing humans and ‘things’: power and rule in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Some scholars offer an easy answer, classifying the digital apparatuses of surveillance emerging during the pandemic as signs of Panopticon and the disciplinary society reemerging (e.g. Couch et al 2020). This is inaccurate as this technology imposes no state of constant anxiety about being surveilled in order to modify behaviour.…”

Korean mothers’ morality in the wake of COVID-19 contact-tracing surveillance

“…It encompasses the issues of body and identity politics in terms of racism ( Yan et al, 2020 ), human rights in terms of conflict between privacy and the common good ( Kuo, 2020 ), and the tension between democracy and totalitarianism ( Harari, 2020 ; Parodi et al, 2020 ). Meanwhile, academic research on COVID-19 surveillance is steadily rising (e.g., Couch et al, 2020 ; French and Monahan, 2020 ; Ram and Gray, 2020 ; Vitak and Zimmer, 2020 ), but empirical studies are still limited (e.g. DiMoia, 2020 ; Stevens and Haines, 2020 ).…”

The global flood of COVID-19 contact tracing apps: sailing with human rights and data protection standards against the wind of mass surveillance

“…On 13 March 2020, two days after declaring COVID-19 a pandemic, the World Health Organisation has boosted countries alongside testing, social distancing and other measures to apply contact tracing to prevent infections and save lives [1]. Contact-tracing apps have been widely implemented all around the world, including, in China, Singapore, Australia, the United States and also in the majority of European countries [2]. Contact tracing is a joint and coordinated response of the European Union (EU) member states to COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…A range of other surveillance technologies have also been rapidly developed and deployed to tackle the spread of COVID-19, e.g. facial recognition, thermal cameras, biometric wearables and drones [2]. For example, Italy, Greece, Hungary and Germany have used drones to monitor compliance with physical distancing measures in public spaces.…”