It is a fact – and plain logic – that the overwhelming number of news articles regarding information technology (IT), in the last couple of months, were one way or another, directly or indirectly, linked to the COVID-19 crisis.
Just, for example, call any supplier of computer hardware in Amman and ask to buy a webcam. They will all tell you that this item is out of stock and that they have sold hundreds and thousands of these small cameras in the past weeks, to respond to the market demand. Quality high-definition webcams are critical components that are required to make good video calls and to meet online when using a computer. The demand surged because of the lockdown created by the virus situation.
Whereas IT and the web helped tremendously to alleviate the pain and to keep things going, even if sometime only partially, questions were raised again about the excessive population control that would be the unavoidable consequence of digital-only transactions, street cameras surveillance, online meetings and remote biometric identification. Once everything is digitally identified, scanned, monitored, recorded and registered, freedom is reduced by a few degrees at the same time.
What can really be scary is the prospect of increased Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods and processes that are going to be more and more integrated in computer programming. In other words, surveillance is going to become significantly, dramatically more efficient, for better or for worse.
Two weeks ago on cnbc.com, Arjun Kharpal mentioned China, Israel, South Korea and Singapore, among the countries using mass surveillance tools like drones, credit card information, camera footage and CCTV to monitor people quarantined because of the coronavirus situation. The combination of all the information gathered this way, followed by an analysis done through AI algorithms, makes an “alarmingly” efficient tool, to decide in the end if you are a nice person, or on the contrary, if you did anything wrong, if you are a bad citizen who didn’t play by the rules!
You can look at it as excessive government control with a hidden agenda or as a better way to protect the citizens – an honest, genuine action. The tool is a double edged-sword. Polish scholar Sergiusz Prokurat put it quite eloquently: “It can both liberate and enslave.” It has always been like that, except that this time Information Technology and AI have made the tool a particularly powerful one.
Making payments using the various and many cashless means available today certainly, definitely reduces the risk of viral contamination by physical contact with the banknotes. It also makes it virtually impossible, or at least much more difficult, to conceal illegal payments. Even before the COVID-19 crisis was upon us we were already heading towards a cashless society. The crisis has merely accelerated the trend. In the end we need to know what we want and are willing to accept and live with, to what extent do we want to be “protected”.
Our location can easily be tracked through our smartphone. There are as many jokes about this old subject as there are illustrations of it in movies and TV series, with villains smashing and discarding a phone after making a call, so as not to be traced by whoever is after them. Naturally geo-tracking, or localisation, can also be of great help and even a real life-saver in countless situations. It is another example of how technology can be a double-edged sword.
It is the same old story, except that perhaps the current crisis has sharpened the sword a little more.
