Global Views on Media and Surveillance in the Age of Corona
In January, I had the pleasure of traveling throughout Southeast Asia with a group of Columbia Business School students. The trip had an educational bend, introducing us to companies and business leaders in Singapore and Jakarta, with a final vacation-only pit stop in Bali.
It was a momentous trip; the kind of travel that expands your worldview in unique and irreversible ways. In Singapore, I often felt like I was still in America, malls, skyscrapers and capitalism abound. But whiffs of Asia — particularly the view of Singapore’s illustrious port — reminded me that I wasn’t. In Jakarta, I felt tiny and alive.
By the time we reached Bali, the coronavirus outbreak had spread to Singapore. When I left Bali and flew through Dubai on my way home, fears of the virus were illustrated by the increased number of travelers wearing masks.
The rest is history.
Recently, in lieu of an in person reunion, students from the trip reunited via Zoom. As with most conversations these days, we could not resist discussing the pandemic. The wonderfully diverse group, comprised of students from India, China, Indonesia, Singapore and the United States, offered a glimpse of how different parts of the world are responding to the crisis. What emerged was an interesting divide in perspective on media and surveillance.
One Chinese student detailed China’s surveillance methods via Alipay. Citizens are color coded red, green or yellow — health status indicators that limit a person’s ability to move about freely depending on their perceived level of contagion risk.
But, according to the New York Times, that’s not all it does. “…the system does more than decide in real time whether someone poses a contagion risk. It also appears to share information with the police, setting a template for new forms of automated social control that could persist long after the epidemic subsides” (Mozur, Zhong, Krolik).
A Singaporean student lauded such surveillance efforts and wondered why America wouldn’t follow suit. I remarked that Americans are loath to give up their privacy so blatantly, and comparisons to giving up privacy to Google, Facebook and Amazon don’t hold. She agreed, but countered that we’re already following government mandates to practice social distancing and close non-essential businesses. Why not take it one step further, get ahead of the virus and get back to normal sooner?
The New York Times offered a helpful comparison that belies my perspective: “While Chinese internet companies often share data with the government, the process is rarely so direct. In the United States, it would be akin to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using apps from Amazon and Facebook to track the coronavirus, then quietly sharing user information with the local sheriff’s office” (Mozur, Zhong, Krolik). This is a practice Americans are sure to reject.
India, according to two students from Calcutta and Mumbai, is an impending disaster. The size of the country, coupled with its poor infrastructure, mean great suffering for its citizens. But when asked if they were bothered by the way in which the Indian government has worked to control the message, i.e. the media, in its response to the coronavirus outbreak, the answer was basically no.
Both students agreed that the risk of spreading panic throughout a country of nearly 1.4 billion people could wreak havoc — potentially more than the virus itself. They also agreed that there remain independent media outlets in India, unaffected by government attempts to control the message. Indeed, India’s supreme court recently denied “a government request that news outlets be ordered to refrain from publishing on the virus without official clearance” (Loveluck, Dixon, Taylor).
However India isn’t the only place where the government and media are struggling to align their message. As reported in the Washington Post, governments around the world “..have tried to shape coverage so it avoids criticism or information that authorities deem harmful to public order. Questioning of official accounts has drawn fines, police investigations and the expulsion of foreign correspondents. In some countries, the virus has provided a pretext for governments to pass emergency legislation that is likely to curb freedoms long after the contagion has been extinguished” (Loveluck, Dixon, Taylor).
And therein lies perhaps the greatest fear of many Americans in regards to Chinese-level surveillance methods: If we give up our privacy now, can we ever get it back?
We all long for the coronavirus outbreak to end. I would much rather reunite with my peers and discuss such questions in person than over Zoom. But as to how we get there, I tend to agree with renowned political scientist and Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer:
“You don’t need an authoritarian state to fight coronavirus effectively. Germany, Singapore and Taiwan are doing very well. You need a government that prioritizes science and expertise. And a population that considers their authority legitimate.”
