Yuval Noah Harari: The world after coronavirus

(Elenabsl, 2019)

The Covid-19 epidemic significantly impacted on today's living conditions, modified values, as well as changed the working conditions globally that will continue to change in the future years. Both on an individual, and group level, people have been forced to accept the frightening and unpredictable conditions and thereafter adapt quickly to the continuously changing environment. Since the outbreak developed rapidly, emergency decisions were urgent. The need for a speedy response specifically regarding working conditions to ensure the populations both health and safety were required by both governments and organisations globally. The quick and forced actions resulted however in serious drawbacks for many, while manipulations of people from both governments and organisations were occurring since monitoring people became more difficult than before. 

Many countries quickly developed new surveillance technologies to ensure monitoring of their population. China is the most noteworthy example. Through their well-developed technology, the Chinese authorities were quickly provided the ability to identify suspected coronavirus carriers, while tracking each individual's movements as well as identifying everyone they had been in contact with. Also, various mobile apps were created worldwide during this time, used to alert users when they are or have been in close contact to infected patients. (Harari, 2020) 

Government surveillance and monitoring of the population may be viewed as an effective way of tracking the spread of the virus. However, from an ethical point of view it may be viewed as violating the fundamental human right, namely privacy. If we in a near future will see an increase in mass monitoring, it may lead to a radical decrease in privacy including both safety, security and health of the population. This issue has also been discussed by various governments both in court as well as in the media. "The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has today issued a landmark ruling that the UK's mass surveillance regime violates people's rights to privacy and freedom of expression."(PI, 2021) From my point of view, since privacy is a fundamental human right and of large importance in direct connection to freedom and life itself, humans need to be provided with the ability to behold their right to privacy in today's world and in the upcoming future. 

References

Harari, Y. N. (2020, March 20). Yuval Noah Harari: The world after coronavirus: Free to read. Financial Times. Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://www.ft.com/content/19d90308-6858-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

PI. (2021, May 25). Human rights groups win European Court of Human Rights claim on UK mass surveillance regime. Privacy International. Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://privacyinternational.org/press-release/4522/human-rights-groups-win-european-court-human-rights-claim-uk-mass-surveillance

Elenabsl. (2019, November 25). Privacy vs security stock vector. illustration of information - 164887611. Dreamstime. Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://www.dreamstime.com/privacy-vs-security-people-balancing-concepts-scale-personal-data-protection-concept-image164887611