Report Tracks How Governments Fighting COVID Are Increasing Surveillance

[Mary Wilson]

By Adam Xu
October 14, 2020 06:06 PM

Governments around the world have used the COVID-19 pandemic as their reason for expanding digital surveillance and collecting more data from their citizens, according to a report published Wednesday.

The annual Freedom on the Net report, published by democracy and human rights research group Freedom House, found that state and nonstate actors cited COVID-19 to justify expanded surveillance and the deployment of new technologies that were once seen as too intrusive.

https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/report-tracks-how-governments-fighting-covid-are-increasing-surveillance

[Mary Wilson]

Battle in Portugal over plans for compulsory virus app

AFP 5 hrs ago

Portugal's government is in damage control mode after it triggered widespread outrage and ignored EU guidelines with plans to make a Covid-19 contract tracing app compulsory.

... "I hate to be authoritarian, but we have to get this pandemic under control," Prime Minister Antonio Costa said Thursday.

He had announced Wednesday that he would ask parliament for an "urgent" law making it compulsory to install the government tracing app, alongside mask-wearing on the street.

... Meanwhile the Portuguese Data Protection Authority (CNPD) said making the app compulsory would undermine "respect for private life" as well as raising "ethical" questions, spokeswoman Clara Guerra told AFP.

Portuguese digital rights group D3 said in a statement that the government's plans were an "unprecedented and antidemocratic" intrusion into citizens' private lives, threatening legal action if they become law.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/battle-in-portugal-over-plans-for-compulsory-virus-app/ar-BB1a6rpI