Fri 10 December 2021:

AlgorithmWatch warns that a plethora of automated decision-making systems were implemented in haste under the guise of public health.

The COVID-19 pandemic was exploited as an excuse to further normalise surveillance and monitor an increasing number of daily activities of people around the world under the guise of public health, a tech watchdog warned on Thursday.

Since the onset of the coronavirus crisis, a slew of automated decision-making (ADM) systems were adopted in haste and with almost no transparency, no adequate safeguards, and insufficient democratic debate, according to AlgorithmWatch, a non-profit that tracks ADM systems and their impacts on society.

Its “Tracing the Tracers” project in a new report includes the findings of a yearlong monitoring of the implementation of the ADM systems – including systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) – in Europe and beyond.

Thermoscanners at Fiumicino airport in Rome checking people’s temperature at arrival.

The Berlin, Germany-based group warns that the situation regarding ADM systems is even worse than before the COVID-19 pandemic began because they now include potentially life-saving tools.

Some examples of ADM systems include digital contact tracing (DCT) apps and digital COVID certificates (DCC). AlgorithmWatch warns that the adoption of these tools happened fast and without any consideration of potential risks and downfalls.

“It is shocking indeed to witness the same dangerous trends we documented before the pandemic — widespread opacity, insufficient democratic oversight and debate, solutionist assumptions — even when millions of lives are at stake,” Fabio Chiusi, project lead for the Tracing the Tracers project, told Al Jazeera.

He cautioned that COVID-19 and the mass surveillance adopted in Europe and elsewhere over the last two years – such as contact-tracing apps and COVID-19 status certifications – are part of an “unprecedented social experiment in health surveillance”.

What’s even more worrisome is how little

this has been debated in democratic countries.

FABIO CHIUSI, PROJECT LEAD FOR THE TRACING THE TRACERS PROJECT

For example, thermoscanners and surveillance cameras with the assistance of drones and robots helped ensure that people were social distancing and abiding by quarantine rules and regulations.

The idea that technology can be used to solve complex social issues, including public health, is not a new one. But the pandemic strongly influenced how technology is applied, with much of the push coming from public health policymaking and public perceptions, said the report.

The report also highlighted the growing divide between people who fervently defend the schemes and those who staunchly oppose them – and how fear and misinformation have influenced both sides.

The results produced by AI “have been wildly overblown, subject to hype, and even exploited in dangerous, Cold War-style propaganda among conflicting superpowers,” Chiusi said.

“The trend long precedes the pandemic, and a public health emergency may be framed — and it has been — as the perfect excuse to justify — and even worse, normalize — widespread surveillance, especially in non-democratic contexts. What’s even more worrisome is how little this has been debated in democratic countries as well,” he told Al Jazeera.