Kareem Fahim, Min Joo Kim and Steve Hendrix,
A smartphone app in Turkey asked for Murat Bur's identity number, his father's name and information about his relatives. Did he have any underlying health conditions, the app wondered, presenting him a list of options. How was he feeling at the moment, it asked. It also requested permission to track his movements.
In a matter of months, tens of millions of people in dozens of countries have been placed under surveillance. Governments, private companies and researchers observe the health, habits and movements of citizens, often without their consent. It is a massive effort, aimed at enforcing quarantine rules or tracing the spread of the coronavirus, that has sprung up pell-mell in country after country.
"This is a Manhattan Project-level problem, that is being addressed by people all over the place," said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, a research center at the University of Toronto.
He is among a group of researchers and privacy advocates who say there is not enough debate over the consequences and utility of the new surveillance tools, and no indication how long the scrutiny will last - even as the flood of prying apps are becoming a reality for millions of people, like solitude and face masks.
At least 27 countries are using data from cellphone companies to track the movements of citizens, according to Edin Omanovic, the advocacy director for Privacy International, which is keeping a record of surveillance programs. At least 30 countries have developed smartphone apps for the public to download, he said.
In South Korea, millions of people have signed up to use websites or apps that show how the virus is spreading. More than 2 million Australians quickly downloaded a coronavirus contact-tracing app that was released on Sunday. But 3 in 5 Americans say they are unwilling or unable to use an infection-alert system being developed by Google and Apple, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll has found.
Epidemiologists and government health officials have taken a central role in designing some of the coronavirus tracking programs. Privacy groups have been far more concerned when intelligence agencies have taken the lead, as they have in Pakistan and Israel, or when governments outsource tracing to private companies.
Infection-tracking software by NSO, an Israeli company, has attracted criticism before it has even launched. The company is best know for designing surveillance tools used by authoritarian governments to spy on dissidents, journalists and others. A person close to NSO said its new coronavirus tracking software, called Fleming, was being tested by more than two dozen governments around the world.
The pandemic has all but silenced the debate about encroachments on privacy by corporations, Scott-Railton said. "People are anxious. They are worried. They want to go back to normal, to handle doorknobs, to online date.
Turkey, which is wrestling with one of the worst outbreaks in the world, uses technology to track the spread of the virus in at least two ways. One is the app, called Life Fits in the Home, which solicits personal details to track infections and provides information, including the location of nearby hospitals and pharmacies.
The government has said that it is doing mandatory tracking of people 65 years or older, who are required to quarantine, and sending them cellphone messages when they venture out of their homes.
There has been little public backlash against the surveillance in Turkey, where people are accustomed to an intrusive and increasingly authoritarian central government. Any misgivings have also been tempered by a feeling the state should be taking stronger measures to control the outbreak.
Cigdem Sahin, an economics professor at Istanbul University, said she didn't think twice before downloading the tracking app, even though she is normally wary of government surveillance.
"I actually think it might be useful to surveil the spread of corona - if the system is used effectively and does not give an error," she said.
"I have no doubt that Turkey will use such apps as a vehicle for pressure and surveillance when need be," Sahin said.
But her primary concern was whether the app could work properly. It told her little she did not already know about her neighborhood, called Fatih, where there was a high concentration of infections. So she stopped using the app.
"We are being watched and our lives are being recorded, and one wonders how to deal with it," she said. "There is no escaping it."
One of the most critical questions is whether the programs actually yield reliable information about infection chains. Hasan Kasap, 73, a retired university professor, said he received a text message from the health ministry last month warning him to stay home, though he said he had not left his apartment in weeks.
"This approach made me lose my trust in this institution or this tracking system and even made me feel insulted," he said. "Location information is private. It should remain private." After the message, he turned off the option on his own phone that allowed it to be tracked, he said.
South Korea has never imposed a nationwide lockdown or travel restrictions in response to the coronavirus, only issuing strong advisories against nonessential travel as part of a national social distancing campaign. The country's coronavirus response, featuring widespread testing for infections, is often held up as a model around the world.
As part of that effort, South Korea's health authorities track the movement of people and then later retraces the steps of those diagnosed with the virus by using GPS phone tracking, credit card records, surveillance video and interviews with patients. The patient travel histories are published without names to help others identify whether they crossed paths with a virus carrier.
Another smartphone app monitors thousands of people under self-quarantine and reports their movements to the government.
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