Transcripts For ALJAZ All Hail The Lockdown Track It - When Tech Tools Go Viral 20240711

A 2nd day of record high corona virus infections more than a 1000 new cases were confirmed on sunday many in seoul the government has warned that may have to increase restrictions to the highest level. Hundreds of students in nigeria are feared missing after gunmen stormed a school and kidnapped a number of children about 800 students attend a school in Katsina State many flooded during the attack police say 200 have returned safely because. You know a child is a child regardless of his parent children were kidnapped and we didnt sleep throughout the night since 10 pm and were just hearing gunshots some of my relatives children were also taken i have been at the school since dawn and when im sincerely speaking we here in Katsina State are in a terrifying condition we dont see the value of the government in fact i have a younger brother and a child taken along by the kidnappers i am from down jack Katsina State and i have been in this school since dawn and yet there is no update. Ive found police say 3 people have been killed in attacks on the capital prosecutor was shot dead in the east of kabul and in a separate attack 2 people were killed in a bomb blast targeting a member of parliament no group has yet claimed responsibility. The u. K. s burke said negotiator david frost has arrived in brussels as a deadline looms to agree on a trading deal but britain and the e. U. Have warned no deal outcome is most likely one of the main sticking points is whether european fishermen will still have access to waters off the u. K. Those are the headlines all hail the lockdown track it when tech tools go viral vox show is coming up next on aljazeera thanks for watching. Us there are we realistically how can you do it institutionalize corruption in this country if we listen if this breaks up into a conflict between pakistan and india this has implications for the rest of the world we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter. I dont most every stage of this Pandemic Technology has played a major role in keeping us going i cant go to the office because of the lockdowns work with colleagues of us like need Hand Sanitizer facemask all of the next day delivery on Amazon School or University Closed classes are now happening. From the monday in every day aspects of life Grocery Shopping at taman chatting with friends and family to the much more difficult task of trying to track and control this virus big tech has been front and center but in a world where technology has already been developing too fast for regulations and even academic expertise to keep up it seems the pandemic has left us karalee exposed to the pitfalls of a sometimes excessively automated and computerized world. Algorithms big data Artificial Intelligence these days the Tech Industry seems to have a fix for almost every problem we face and while many of these tools have made our lives it is usually easier more efficient even more fun weve also come up against something called technological solution is a concept to seize technology playing the super hero and savior you know most every situation tech writer and intellectual at getting results has been writing about it c. D. s so its something that i saw. The dominant trend in our we think about the the Actual Technology and the way in which we think is defined by and large the growing Silicon Valley and Digital Culture that sort of valley house data and by and large this is an imagination thats the early on straight imagines problems be already narrowly defined so were being told for example that Climate Change is the product off its not turning off the light were being told you know its the consequence will follow not be cycling properly and since the problems that we find in the rather narrow way its very easy to think of a solution that will solve them and that solution would normally would come in the form of an app and that app will essentially tricorder out something thats relatively low hanging fruit thats a small tweak. User is so citizens behave if those more that goal can meet the more structural more fundamental more difficult parts of the political process and get something that also earned competence on the solutions quite a lot of money so was this mindset its of course months surprising that the Current Crisis really it at all it 19 and has trained you to it an abundance solution is acknowledging one of the most urgent problems in the early days of the pandemic was how to. Track and trace the spread of the corona virus think about the shias size of the problem for every infected person city a country information would need to be get the did that with theyd been recently or whom theyd been in contact with if there were people whod been in close contact with the co that patient well the nade need to be found in advice to self isolate or to take any other help because shins and lets say if one of those people are found to have developed symptoms well then the process would have to start afresh. Clearly Contact Tracing is cumbersome and when you have to do it at scale and with spain it can seem a near Impossible Task this makes it appear like the perfect problem for technology to take on so contractors it is a mix extraordinarily old and very sensible way of going about tracking interesting things i spoke with Sean Mcdonald who has spent more than 10 years building deploying critiquing mobile technologies and humanitarian disasters such as Infectious Disease control when a patient has positive interview a person to know where they are and period and then use that information trying to track down other people who might have had contact in terms of the big change in Contact Tracing ups from analog to digital is that removing from and a process that connect you can to treatment through a process that communicates. And communicate in numerous in the absence of treatment capacity has a very different effect on a population and it can cost you or. The other ones life and i think that theres a want to be examined about the fundamentals or assumptions that go into the digital transformation. That hasnt stopped governments and Health Authorities from jumping on board from italy to india more than 150. 00 phone app enabled systems have been developed to track the spread of covert 19 some researchers claim that in places like south korea and taiwan theyve helped identify covert huts. Its in the close contacts of patients but its sean points out from his own experience want to train the bowler in 2014 no technology is perfect certainly not tech that is rushed at the height of a pandemic under the pressure of politics and the threat of that publicity in your bowl response i think it was very early days in understanding a lot of the algorithmic modeling and i think that just labor seeing with the code response and good intentions are everything that good intentions are not good science and rolling out a series of. Coherent view of something as complex as the transmission of the disease knows. In the best of circumstances and so not only do we not have the sort of facility to evaluate the technology itself but we very rarely have the ability to understand. During this pandemic rapid access to data has been crucial in helping to understand the strain of corona virus how contagious it is what he gave us encourage it spread and how effective physical distancing can be. But the loosening of privacy regulations and in some cases the outright neglect of privacy requirements to enable quick access to all this data has brought on a storm of criticism. Now if a tough guy is a Digital Rights researcher based in berlin so obviously the number one major concern about deploying such camps is the privacy concerns what data is being collected where is it being stored which authorities have access to this date for how long are they keeping that data and collecting that data and is it going to be used beyond its purpose in no way the governments Contact Tracing app called smiths stop went from being aggressively pushed by the state in april to being hastily and very publicly rolled back in june when the norwegian Data Protection of the already cited numerous serious privacy violations among them was the needless collection of precise Location Information sometimes in real time other apps in places like qatar singapore india have also failed the data privacy test to give people the choice between right to health and right to privacy it is in is it false economy and it tries to establish a hierarchy of human rights we shouldnt be making choices you know should i save my life and be in good health or should i sacrifice my privacy or just a few about we are being monitored and the government knows about our movement and which people we are interacting with where we going it creates that Chilling Effect look usually and is often some of the most real gunfire we create when added to other types of data it can be used to target us very specifically so we dont allow just anybody access to the Technology Problems that were seeing trying to decide. Are imperfect and thats a very sympathetic problem i think most of us would agree that the dont want to infect other people and that if we help rid of ai people more effectively and thats a good use of the challenge of course is that the transmission behavior because we dont know it is very difficult to know how to model it in data in ways that would effectively rollout in technology i think that we have a lingua franca for talking about the harms of technology and so a lot of times what were talking about are is the app private or is it secure or is the Data Architecture centralized or decent julys the broader questions are are we meaningfully impacting the are are we helping you know reduced mortality increasing the capacity of responders to be affected and if were not doing those things then is the Technology Worth letting out of. Back in march at a time when pandemic panic was relatively new and felt particularly in juicing israel deployed a Contact Tracing system that cut straight past privacy regulations in a move that was unique in the world Contact Tracing in the country was not handled solely by the ministry of health or Crisis Committee the government got the shin bet israels internal Security Service involved every time an israeli tested positive for covert 19 the patients details name id number and mobile phone number would be passed on to the shin bet and thats when something called the tool came into play its a classified and previously undisclosed intelligence database thats been collecting information on citizens for nearly 2 decades originally designed for National Security efforts the tool works like a dragnet gathering metadata from Telecom Providers voice calls Text Messages internet browsing history and crucially for digital Contact Tracing location data via g. P. S. Tracking or mobile phone networks while the content of the conversations and messages are exempt from collection the abundance of personally identifying information is still clearly too much too detailed and unnecessary for the task at hand citizens also didnt sign up for the tracking system and crucially what table to opt out i spoke with human rights lawyer Sharon Abraham vice executive director of the association for civil rights in israel in the region know her as you know her relations the ministry of our machine best to try to you know cations in the roots of those who are. In every month that was in there caught up in the past 2 weeks. Back then betty a didnt transfer to the ministry of the names and numbers of those persons and the ministry would send in a jar in the proximity a message an s. M. S. The day must start quarantine for 14 days its really strange that imagine my hair that number now. Start the or maybe were still left until meters from each other. Maybe arent there you know we havent seen each other we can speak with each other i get a message saying or unseen one of the things thats important about the is really is a very very Sophisticated Technology culture already and they have a very in intelligence too and so one of the main risks here is that were starting something that seems like its Public Health and design measuring. Very quickly becomes a measuring shin bet i mean the government body itself is very opaque theres very little transparency theres very little oversight there is also when you are deploying technologies or taking measures that could infringe on peoples human rights there needs to be a certain conditions i mean one of them is having some of that clauses which basically mean an end date to the technology has been used and transparent and clear understanding of which Government Agencies have access to this data and how has it been used Civil Society groups including the association for civil rights in israel sounded the alarm in mid march petitioning the Supreme Court that the country had ventured into dangerous privacy infringing territory israeli doctors also voice their objections in a joint letter to parliament these relics o. C. A. Ssion of Public Health positions in the Israeli Medical Association said the lack of input from epidemiologists and Public Health specialists raise the likelihood of errors by late april the Supreme Court ruled that the government which had sidestepped parliament when it brought the shin bet into the Contact Tracing set up needed to get this signed off by lawmakers the ruling also stated that a suitable alternative compatible with the principles of privacy must be found it was a victory but it was temporary amid a resurgence of corona virus infections in july. I Israels Parliament authorized the continued use of the shin bet program into january 2021 your study president here saying ok we can try what you may well the next day to give up on this resource. Right is it the fault of your Security Services this hour i. Want to check other alternatives i mean i think this is the greatest concern is that there is not a. Greater pressure to increase the capabilities for him not terror related need in the future with the international justification are saving lives however it isnt just the government in surveillance overdrive the pandemic has opened up opportunities for a number of private Cyber Intelligence and spyware companies most of which are run by former members of the israeli army many of them have worked with some of the latest tracking and Surveillance Technology that is tested on palestinians in the occupied territories one of the most notorious israeli Cyber Intelligence companies is the n. S. O. Group which claims to work with governments around the world to court prevent and investigate terrorism and crime to save thousands of lives. In fact more often than not n. S. O. Has been in the headlines because its high and surveillance tools have been deployed by states against political activists dissidents Human Rights Campaign is journalists even amazon c. E. O. Jeff bezos in march and also started developing its 1st quote civilian product called flemming and Analytics Tool marketed to Government Agencies for tracking peoples movements clinics powerful and algorithms examined patients parts and their Historical Data points with others generating a list of those potentially affected there are many many cases of activists and Civil Society organizations and journalists being tarred. Then harassed and arrested and using a piano so spyware and so given that record its its absolutely concerning to have them come around this time in the pandemic offering help with their technologies perhaps this is for them an opportunity to whitewash their image to say you know where they are to help we have a health and demick its a global one we have solutions or what i would like oceanus a young girl stating the market in brochures prepared by the us army is called. Some kind of out of the war on the tutor of the observing for example patient a commission to acknowledge troops for their long time there if you will feel under 50 years ago you would see about the marketing brochures on the statements made by the industry where completely out of scotch the us will go to war with just latched onto a bill of deliberate face recognition even if the boss is makes your face this way because the market in place where the pressures they are are short on the you know whats essential but because so much money has been channeled. His privacy rights got trampled in the stampede to create Contact Tracing apps to behemoths of the tech world came together in april engineers at apple and google have been working together to make Public Health technology that protects individual privacy so that people never have to choose between their privacy and the health and safety of their community the 2 Companies Said they would offer Contact Tracing software to Public Health institutions and governments to build their own apps or and at the heart of the system is Bluetooth Technology when 2 phones recognize that they are close enough for a long enough period of time they would trade an anonymous string of code with each other called a key should one of the phone on his latest input a coded post of status into the app the information would get pinged to all the phones at it being in its proximity. For the previous 2 weeks the keys are encrypted and constantly changing but the most important point is that they never leave your phone so there isnt a centralized list of who is interacted with whom the partnership is arguably created one of the most privacy protecting technologies to help track the spread of the current virus a smart move in both business and publicity times when i spoke with guinea he brought the solution is critiqued the issue now i would say that its more as terrifying to me you know many other solutions we have to try to reduce our solutions what you have to do in food are conditional but fark dot the Democratic Power that can feel about rocky current those more exist in the strong form. In order to i dont get is you and surviving and induct all solution is rock you know is more field by Democratic Forces it would show them by the security and the sovereign state which in its kind of democratic implications is as bad as the solution i will perhaps more dangerous or. This. The pandemic has provided a jewel boost for the Tech Industry at one level its presented governments and regulators with the destruction of global proportions the kind thats trying recent investigations into tech practices and disciplinary hearings off schedule and lower down the list of priorities 2nd its been a huge business boost despite the many drawbacks in the way that tech is being designed and works in our lives cousin 19 has helped cement the Tech Industry within the private sector and it increasingly looks like in the main way some possible to think about the knowledge of them as something that would not be provided by the knowledgeable because we think well what else could it be if youre caught in the snow and cold you would think there is nothing outside of google or facebook and the only other alternative would be some. I know of some through it i am economy like the sort that youre in and this is where solutions and steps and to basically say ok we have accept that its cost writing the world according to a thing i would play and here is an app that will help us meet again and ill leave the pay and then the costs you know there is a real absence a real lack for the most part of people actually saying to technology what weve seen is that there are a lot of folks who feel as though there is never the billeted to the concern is that when you have really brilliant academics or very Large Companies deciding that these things are inevitable what they do is they give political cover to institutions who are then go into. If academics were saying this doesnt accomplish anything instead of this is how does introduce a shoe box in the public dialogue with contractors in the very different so im guessing shawn you wouldnt put a context racing up on the thing no i wouldnt put it on my phone because i dont want to receive hundreds of notification. Was that in proximity to this test for real privacy is important protection but what we havent seen is a proven Value Proposition and so i wouldnt download it not because im concerned about my privacy but i wouldnt doubt it because i dont know what to do during this pandemic as both the public and law makers have growing ever more reliant on the technologies of Silicon Valley the to constrain knows that this is its moment its not for nothing. Leaders and this is like your former chairman of google has now been saying he hopes that this crisis has the just how essential and fundamental this industry yes imagine the pandemic with out amazon without google without apple without faced youd have to go back to 918. 00 youd be operating on. The great fear ultimately this and the city will use the aftermath of this crisis in order to shape a much more favorable regulatory themselves i think all of us should be grateful that these Tech Companies are working really hard to help right now unfortunately i think they will actually find quite a lot of perception among general public and that edge of the consequential policy this is we could have made the friend decisions 10 years in though a few 1000 years ago where we would put it there deficient intelligence or logistics or Cloud Computing as a public growth which will not make us so that in the likes of im a sawn or go girl or microscope and we would be living in a very different world and i would argue about what will be far more than a fad a new course right now there is no way for us to have any normal market democratic say in how this infrastructure is a government because they will they want to. The large number of unknown surrounding the coronavirus pandemic can make it feel like a problem too big for us to grapple with but what we do know however is that one of the best determinants of mortality is Health Care System capacity and we also already know a number of ways to meaningfully invest resources into it we dont need an app for that the most important things that are improving their value now are not things that we invent we see Good Government communication we see strong patient investment in capacity and from. You see Strong Social safety nets Care Networks build a community. Of contacts and of Course Technology plays a part. In supporting those infrastructures but the rush to something this sort of push to the miracle cure or solution. Often very distracting from the things that. I dont want to downplay the role of technology here Technology Enables people to share information and taxes information like never before it enables us to have this interview which there is allows us to continue our lives with as little destruction as possible but we dont want to live in a world that enables mass surveillance and therefore it is our responsibility to understand that were not just idle what share is the pandemic is not permanent what it will be permanent is how much are we allowing to go unnoticed and im questions you know the world in the past few decades and the assumption that this should be at the center of social organisation and we have seen that the consequences are far from all of us so even bracing so it buries here as a way to the organises something buried under both and it serves as a god not just as an upstart idea. The virus is indiscriminate good those living in poverty are far more vulnerable to the dangers of covert mug. The reasons for this disparity the social and economic inequalities that surround us a much deeper and much more problematic than we thought a dos whether Lessons Learned from the Global Pandemic could lead to positive change the growth of the rule of fix the him who did all hail the lockdown exposer privilege on poverty during a crisis on a just. These men are survivors of covert 1946 year old is a limousine driver is the only one here who needed to go to hospital when he became bill in early march the Breeding Program body will be combatants for the november so deep it is a 34 year old driver for guitar and family and he tested positive my body is good it will always small but what you want to give the Health Officials say the rate of new infections as the goal here is to conduct a broad serving to better understand transmission and asymptomatic cases which in turn could help paul see this issues in the future so it would be easy for us to inform the Decision Making on what to do next the goal now is to increase testing and contact trees that. The government provides retesting and medical treatment for those who need it while campaigns to raise awareness continue. Rooming the city a city with a drug problem. In a neighborhood consumed by trafficking giulio transforms to scare into. Giving children the bleak frameless street and its. Out on the street of the viewfinder latin america series. Does it. When the news breaks the impact of the storms in honduras has been particularly devastating when people need to be hurt no group has claimed responsibility for the shooting on the outskirts of srinagar indian administered kashmir people here say theyre living in fear aljazeera has teams on the ground we never ate this type of food back home we simply dont know if we can teach you to bring you more Award Winning documentaries and live news on air and online its 10 years since the arab spring shook countries across the middle east a decade on from the 1st uprising well look at the legacy of the revolution. To join us as we assess the changes in the Political Landscape of the middle east and north africa. On aljazeera. To. This is aljazeera. Hello there i missed audiotape this is the news hour live from our headquarters here and coming up in the next 60 minutes as coronavirus vaccines roll out around the wild questions grow about both supply and santa. In the United States supplies of the newly approved Pfizer Vaccine are scheduled to reach some states on monday as the country registers yet another wreck or death toll. Parents of kidnapped students say hundreds are still missing after gunmen attacked