Will the COVID-19 pandemic lead to mass digital surveillance?

To enforce country wide lockdown, governments have resorted to digital surveillance which might not be retracted

In some ways, it already has. It was expected that the enforcement of such an endeavor would need the implementation of extensive surveillance. Billions of people across the globe are now facing enhanced monitoring. The scary part, however, is not the monitoring itself, but that the measures enforced on the pretext of controlling the spread of the pandemic, might not be rolled back.

While surveillance of citizens already existed in some countries to varying degrees, the pandemic has given the authorities an excuse of a blanket implementation. China, where the coronavirus originated is already considered a surveillance state — where a vast network of 170 million surveillance cameras is used to monitor the 1.4 billion of its citizens.

As restrictions begin to ease off in countries where the pandemic infections have dropped off, return to the new normal is being helped along with the use of technology. In China, people have been asked to install mandatory “health code” apps that determine whether they are free to work/travel or stay quarantined, dependent upon the color-coded designations of green, yellow…