Fight against Corona: this method makes blocking superfluous

WHenine Dietzel leaves the house in Singapore, she only has a fully charged cell phone. She needs it to be able to move freely. “I have to register everywhere,” he tells WELT over the phone. How often do you have to pull out your cell phone, Dietzel explains using the example of a visit to a shopping mall. You scan it first at the main entrance, then when you enter one of the many stores inside, when you exit, and finally when you exit the building and onto the street.

So when you visited the mall and four stores in it, your data was saved ten times. “Even at a small take-out stall in the market, they have to scan me,” says the German, who has lived in Singapore for three years. The Asian city-state currently registers less than ten new cases of Covid-19 per day. An important part of the fight against viruses is electronic tracking: with the help of an app or a small device, authorities can track all the movements of their citizens when they leave home.

Also in South Korea, the virus seems almost defeated and public life is normal. To do this, the country sacrifices the privacy of its citizens and accepts that infected people will be intimidated online. Is surveillance the price to pay for a “free” life under Covid-19? Examples from two Asian democracies.

Singapore

In Singapore, the virus has not always been as well controlled as it is now. The country of 5.6 million recorded around 58,000 cases in total. Thousands of guest workers were infected in their crowded bedrooms over the summer. Singapore is currently in phase two of three of a gradual opening of a lockdown that ended in mid-June. Public life is still not what it was before the pandemic. Bars and discos are still closed, restaurants close promptly at 10 pm

“When we go out to eat, the so-called ambassadors of social distancing run around checking the distance between the tables. If a diner gets too close to someone else’s table, the restaurant pays a fine of S $ 1,000, ”says Dietzel, the equivalent of a good 620 euros. And yet you can move freely on the field again. Soon he explored every corner of the island on his bicycle that he hadn’t been out since February. Schools and kindergartens, museums, cinemas, gyms and offices are also reopened under strict precautionary measures and with a limited number of children, visitors or employees.

This is made possible by electronic government tracking. Citizens must carry a cell phone with them in order to track their movements. Older residents who do not have a cell phone must carry an electronic token, for example, on their key ring. These devices, which are half the size of a packet of tissues, respond to Bluetooth signals throughout the city and thus report where the owners are.

In both cases, this works through the Singapore Crown TraceTogether app. This also served as a model for Germany in the middle of the year. But while only about 22 percent of German citizens have downloaded it, more than 40 percent of Singaporeans installed the app at home. The use of TraceTogether will be mandatory at the end of December and will be merged with the control system for visits to businesses and public facilities.

Nowadays, everywhere in the public, people already have to register and go out with their mobile phones, as in the example of the shopping center. This system is currently linked to the TraceTogether application. “Of course it makes you uncomfortable that the government has so much data on me. On the other hand, my data also goes to US companies when I use social networks, ”says Dietzel.

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There is great public acceptance of the measures. A study on “Attitudes towards surveillance technologies in the fight against Covid-19” by the Institute of Public Policy of Singapore think tanks found that 59 percent of respondents favor contact tracing on their cell phones . After all, 49 percent of those surveyed agreed that their cell phone data can be accessed without their consent.

Every night Dietzel receives an SMS from the government in which no new cases are normally reported in the country. Dietzel has gotten used to the high level of security. There is simply no crime in Singapore. And there has been no Covid-19 for a few weeks. She cannot be infected. “I have no choice but to obey the many rules,” he says. “But I also see what I get for it.”

South Korea

George Baca also receives text messages from the government every day. “In the last three days there were 76 pieces,” says the American professor of social anthropology at Dong-A University in Busan. Baca sends screenshots of a message from February this year. It is translated:

“In the Haeundae area of ​​Busan, a confirmed patient was in the following locations: at 10 am he left his home in Haeundae and went to Jangsan church (in the Jangsan area of ​​Haeundae); In the Ban Yeo area of ​​Haeundae, at 1 pm he went to Ja-Yun Dream (a health food store) and then returned home. “

The details of the data subject in this message were not provided voluntarily, but were collected automatically. The government’s so-called smart management system can access the GPS and credit card data of all citizens. In addition, the surveillance cameras that are present throughout the city are used for observation.

According to Baca, there are numerous apps in South Korea that, for example, can be used to check individual buildings for Covid-infected people. According to a New York Times report, the government’s barely anonymized SMS messages resulted in people being identifiable and intimidated online.

An example from May this year shows the consequences this can have. At an infection rally in Seoul’s Itaewon nightlife district, people from the LGBTQ scene had to fear being inadvertently denounced via government text messages. “One of my friends was in a gay bar in Itaewon the night before the outbreak. He paid for the drinks with his credit card. The next day he received a call to have the test done, ”says Baca.

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After reports of online harassment increased, government informational SMS are now less detailed. The age, sex, nationality and workplace of a patient are no longer disclosed. If all contact persons have already been identified, the whereabouts are no longer indicated.

But the vehement following has left its mark. A survey by the Seoul National University Graduate School of Public Health found that respondents were more concerned about the social stigma of the disease than about the virus itself.

There were two main groups of Covid-19 outbreaks in South Kora, but no blockage. In recent days, the number of daily cases has once again exceeded 100. The government is concerned. However, according to Baca, the country sees itself as an international winner. “The Korean government is proud to have controlled the virus better than the United States and Western Europe.” South Korea is also named as a role model in the management of the crown in the German media, as is Taiwan. There, the government compares travel data with health and cell phone data.

Of course, there are other reasons why Asian democracies are fighting the pandemic more successfully than the Western world. These include the early closure of the border, the social acceptance of the use of masks, and the use of contingency plans drawn up during the Sars and Mers epidemics. However, surveillance, big data and the sacrifice of privacy are an important part of the strategy for success.

According to the Singapore government, personal data will only be stored in the app for 25 days and will only be processed by a few officials. In South Korea it is 14 days by law. Citizens can only hope this is true and that the pandemic is not being used to undermine privacy. Noted historian Yuval Noah Harari recently warned in an interview with WELT: “In 50 years, one might remember less about the virus than about the start of surveillance.”