Week 2
In this week, I tried to explore a possible project idea of surveillance in COVID-19.
Thanks for Theresa’s website and Darcie’s comment, which gave me an inspiration. And the readings about policing and surveillance in Exclusion and Inequality also show me some example of governmental surveillance through biotech. What hidden behind are asymmetric biopolitical relation and inequality for the marginalised. So, I just record my thinking here after skimming thru few papers.
The instant example is the health code in China. It is a traffic permit that records personal trajectory and covid test result. And the data is connected to the police, communities and CDC. It is the only easy way to prove not infected. In term of its zero-covid policy, it is still being used nationwide.
Health code is supposed to be taken as a social contract for public health, where residents give up rights of holding personal trajectory and bio-information. But there are many misuses. A recent case is that officials in Henan Province gave depositors of local banks red codes (that means they are infected and should be taken for concentration isolation) to prevent them from getting access to their savings when bankruptcy, though they were not infected. It indicates that officials can get access to health code data for non-public health purpose and match identification with data in other datasets.
Another interesting point is that the health code is powered by WeChat and Ali Pay, which are the dominant social media and a commonly-used financial platform. As the apps store these personal informations, let alone they continuously require other information in e-commerce, our data is depossessed to a second directory in a data market. And I read few chapters of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (it is quite hard), which illustrates a future market of data commodification. I plan to think if there is any possible connection.
After the casual thinking above, I would like to make a plan for my next blog, because it’s a more important one. I plan to find more relevant resource of this idea and ideas I mentioned last week. That includes appropriate datasets, papers on the same topic. And I haven’t figured out how the partner bank works.
The intensive course tomorrow must be wonderful (sorry today). Looking forward to seeing you guys!
Wow I cannot believe the abuse of information example you gave regarding blocking access to people’s own money when they need it most. Where I am living, the federal government created an excellent app for COVID reporting and tracking that was pretty anonymous in terms of data retained and privacy. Unfortunately my own home province decided they did not want to use the app, as they did not want to be surveilled by the “feds”. They instead created their own app no one used, so it was a waste of taxpayer money to create and implement, and then no one wanted to use it. One of the primary reasons was the app has a poor user interface and the provincial government had already turned people off of the idea. This same government implemented a virtual health care system during COVID that was run by a large telecomm company (Telus) who it turned out was selling the data it collected through virtual medical appointments to third parties. Many people suspect it is to eventually lead to private healthcare, which would be more like what the US has in place where people then have to pay and if you have pre-existing conditions, you will not be likely to get insurance coverage. If it helps, I have learned that you don’t have to have a project partner or you can find your own through your own networks or others for connections. I think this has broadened my thinking around my project to find something I really want to do, then match up a good partner or others who are impacted to approach for support. I am excited to get to you know you better – your insights and comments are very informative for me and cause me to think!
Hi, Darcie! Thanks for the COVID case in your place. It is very helpful for me to compare it with the health code in China. And I think people have different considerations about the COVID tracking program because of medical infrastructures and political backgrounds in different countries. Your comment also inspires me a lot!
I’m so glad you found that website useful, Will.
COVID-19 surveillance in China is definitely interesting. Like, even when used “properly” (so not like completely abusing the system a la the Henan officials), it can be pretty creepy. Shanghai, for example, will change the color of your code if you don’t PCR test within a certain amount of time. And Beijing’s code has a popup that makes the code unusable until you get a fresh PCR test result (and the popup can happen for all kinds of reasons so that you’ll be headed to, say, the train station, think you’re fine, and find you can’t take the train because you have a popup). But then, while in some cases it seems all-encompassing, in others, the data seems to be weirdly absent. This past weekend, a COVID case in Shanghai that went to a bar (before testing positive) led to thousands of people getting locked in their apartments for at least two days. But while some were identified through location tracing, many were flagged because someone (maybe a friend or colleague or acquaintance) said they were in a particular place on a particular day. So it’s weird. For a system that’s taken up so much of so many people’s lives, it’s surprisingly… incomplete?
Hi! Theresa. Thanks for your cases. I still remember I went to Beijing four days ahead of schedule just to avoid the popup and ensure I could get on the plane when coming to Edinburgh. Though there are some formalistic standards to label health code, I think it is decided and explained by many parties who manipulate behind, like communities, CDC, and the government. They are so changeable, and regulations lack legislation.